Trinidad and Tobago National Under-17 Coach Anton Corneal expressed disappointment in his team’s second consecutive 2-0 loss to Mexico, but says the overall performance by the young ‘Soca Warriors’ was very encouraging.
Speaking with ‘ttproleague.com’ after the match, Corneal said, “Of course I am disappointed in the result of the game. Nobody likes to lose, but looking back at the game we had lots of good spells in the first half and for longer periods in the second half.”
“I think physically we matched and them and at times outplayed them, but unfortunately again we have nothing to show for it.”
“We are seven weeks away from what we are preparing for and we can see that we are close to being game ready. We are pretty much still building on it and as we get closer to the tournament we are going to be ready,” said Corneal.
The Trinidad and Tobago youngsters went down 2-0 against the Mexicans twice in the two practice matches played as they get themselves ready for the final round of qualifying for the 2007 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Korea, where Mexico are the defending Champions.
The first match against the Mexicans was played on the Fatima Grounds, Mucurapo and Coach Coneal believes his team’s performance had a lot to do with the better playing surface at the Ato Boldon Stadium.
“We had a much better performance than in the first match and this had a lot to do with the field we played on. It was really a good game to look at, but not the result we want and somewhere along the line we have to break this pattern.”
“It’s going to take a greater effort from what we are seeing right now. It is now a stage where we are seven weeks away from the qualifiers and we are hoping to keep stepping it up as a team.”
“We have made mainly defensive blunders but looking at the game from box to box, I taught we did well. In midfield we closed them down defensively, we used the size of the park pretty good and in the second half we had shots which were really good because we kept them backing in their defence and all this is really good but we need a bit more,” admitted the national coach.
Corneal also revealed that the team would travel to the United States in the near future as they continue to prepare for the World Youth Tournament.
“We have something planned to go to the US to play against a Professional team and a University team. This would be a training camp with two games where we can probably fine tune a lot more, train two to three times a day and get ready for the tournament,” ended the Under-17 Coach.
Trinidad and Tobago are expected to compete against Costa Rica, Jamaica, Canada and USA in the final round of the CONCACAF Group B Fixtures from April 28th to May 6th and the three top teams would qualify for the 2007 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Korea.