JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Gold Cup is T&T's chance at success

by

Alvin Corneal
2090 days ago
20190614
Alvin Corneal

Alvin Corneal

In all my years of be­ing part of our foot­ball de­vel­op­ment, I have found it very dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how or which route we took to bring our foot­ball to its present dis­ar­ray.

I would have dis­card­ed the de­tails of the past and looked for­ward to an im­proved state in the near fu­ture, es­pe­cial­ly as we are now geared with some tru­ly tal­ent­ed play­ers and a coach who seems to be very fo­cused on tak­ing our foot­ball to the next lev­el and get­ting all our play­ers, lo­cal and over­seas-based, in readi­ness for the next week's CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup kick-off.

The news which came out of the cor­ri­dors of the TTFA re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion to by­pass the Olympic qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment, de­spite near qual­i­fi­ca­tion when we just missed en­try to the fi­nal in Eng­land 2012, is dis­turb­ing.

This de­ci­sion means that hun­dreds of teenage foot­ballers and young men will have lost the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op their game at the Olympic lev­el. We must now re­place that short­com­ing with one of the or­gan­ised com­pe­ti­tions which are held in the USA, Brazil, France and Eng­land.

How­ev­er, the Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment which starts next Tues­day for our team against Pana­ma in Min­neapo­lis, USA, may well be a glo­ri­ous step to bring­ing some re­spect for the coun­tries in the re­gion.

Af­ter the dif­fi­cul­ties which the team faced with visa prob­lems, the team can get still some en­cour­age­ment af­ter the goal­less match against Japan and the 2-0 loss against Cana­da on Mon­day.

I have al­ways felt that when play­ing away against teams with sim­i­lar stan­dards of play, the host coun­try would be two goals bet­ter be­fore the whis­tle blows, main­ly through the at­mos­phere of huge crowd sup­port, the in­con­ve­nience of fly­ing across time zones, vary­ing meal pat­terns and most of all long trav­el­ling, as was ex­pe­ri­enced en route to Japan last week and then back to North Amer­i­ca.

As to the ac­tu­al Gold Cup open­ing match, I ex­pect that Pana­ma is def­i­nite­ly with­in our vic­to­ry radar. They have not demon­strat­ed the strength of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al play which could re­tain a clean sheet. The team has two cen­tral de­fend­ers who have been los­ing their com­pe­tence over the past two years. Their re­cent friend­lies have not said much, es­pe­cial­ly against Ja­maica, whose phys­i­cal and tac­ti­cal game had brought some dis­com­fort to Pana­ma's “age­ing” de­fence. I reck­on that the speed and clin­i­cal ac­cu­ra­cy of pass­ing by the Japan­ese, plus the rigours of Cana­di­an-type play, may have been the ide­al prepa­ra­tion les­son for T&T. From what I saw of Cana­da, they are ex­cel­lent sup­port­ers of ball win­ning. This means their op­po­nents (T&T in this case) must utilise quick ro­ta­tions among the mid­field­ers and make use of the pen­e­tra­tive pass­es to our quick-foot­ed for­wards. A vic­to­ry against Pana­ma is vi­tal be­cause the USA, our next op­po­nent, will prob­a­bly de­feat Guyana by a heavy mar­gin. Readi­ness for any op­po­nent is a pri­or­i­ty for Den­nis and his team. To my mind, there is a chance for our na­tion­al team to step in­to the next round.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored