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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Yorke: We were poor in every department

by

Walter Alibey
30 days ago
20250617
United States midfielder Sebastian Berhalter, left, looks toward the ball in front of T&T midfielder Joevin Jones (3) during the second half of a CONCACAF Gold Cup football match in San Jose, California, Sunday. T&T suffered a 5-0 loss.

United States midfielder Sebastian Berhalter, left, looks toward the ball in front of T&T midfielder Joevin Jones (3) during the second half of a CONCACAF Gold Cup football match in San Jose, California, Sunday. T&T suffered a 5-0 loss.

AP Photo

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke has ad­mit­ted that his team was poor in every de­part­ment of Sun­day's open­ing Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, Group D match against the host Unit­ed States, which led to a con­vinc­ing 5-0 drub­bing for them at Pay­Pal Park in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia.

He promised, though, that his team will go all out for max­i­mum points when they face Haiti on Thurs­day (June 19).

The top two teams will ad­vance out of the group, but Yorke, car­ry­ing the weight of a qual­i­fy­ing berth for T&T at the FI­FA World Cup next year, will have a lot of work to do to ad­vance out of the group stage. Com­ing on the heels of a 2-1 loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca in the World Cup qual­i­fi­er, though that im­pact was com­fort­ed by an ac­cept­able draw for the fi­nal round of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers in Group B along­side Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da, the So­ca War­riors were off their worst pos­si­ble start by sur­ren­der­ing a goal in the 15th minute.

Two de­fen­sive blun­ders lat­er took the host to 3-0 be­fore the half­time in­ter­val. Yorke at the post-match press con­fer­ence, said those goals were gifts that lat­er snow­balled in­to some­thing big.

"We were not un­der any delu­sion that this game was not go­ing to be the tough­est in the group stage, and of course, we pre­pared thor­ough­ly, try­ing to frus­trate the Amer­i­cans for as long as pos­si­ble. And ob­vi­ous­ly, we con­ced­ed in the 16th minute.

"I felt that we need­ed to hold off Amer­i­ca un­til the half time be­cause we need­ed to make some changes, tac­ti­cal changes. And then, when you look at the goals that we con­ced­ed in the 41st and 44th min­utes, those were two gifts. So, at 1-0, we thought we would have been in the game, but then it snow­balled in­to some­thing and from then on we were al­ways go­ing to play catch up.

"I felt the sec­ond half, we did a lit­tle bet­ter and cre­at­ed one or two chances, but by then the game was al­ready over, it was just a bad day at the of­fice. But we have to put that be­hind us very quick­ly be­cause there are two more games to go. We have to get max­i­mum points against Haiti, and that would be the in­ten­tion go­ing for­ward," Yorke ex­plained.

De­spite a 6-2 win over St Kitts & Nevis at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on June 6, Yorke said the per­for­mance was an in­di­ca­tion of the gap that ex­ist­ed be­tween top in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers and some of his play­ers, not­ing: "It was clear to see that when you're play­ing at in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball you've got to be at a cer­tain lev­el, and as much as I praise my play­ers as much as I can, and will al­ways sup­port them in every sense of the way, to­day (Sun­day) we were not at the races and it gives us an in­di­ca­tion of the gap at in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el and where some of my play­ers are play­ing at the mo­ment.

"We know there is still a lot of work to be done at the mo­ment, and we will con­tin­ue to work to try and close that gap as best as pos­si­ble, but it's a clear in­di­ca­tion that there's still a lot of work ahead of us to do, but you can cer­tain­ly see the class in where we are as a coun­try.

"It was a dif­fi­cult day to­day (Sun­day), we haven't as­sessed too many of the play­ers, we know first half we were poor in every de­part­ment. We felt that the Amer­i­cans were ahead of us in every step of the way in terms of an­tic­i­pa­tion, in terms of cre­ativ­i­ty, in terms of tak­ing con­trol of the game, we just didn't seem to have a foothold in the game, and from that mo­ment we were al­ways up against it."

In the oth­er Group D en­counter, Sau­di Ara­bia edged Haiti 1-0 at the Snap­drag­on Sta­di­um in San Diego. Af­ter the Haiti match, the So­ca War­riors will face Sau­di Ara­bia on Sun­day (June 22).


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