National Head Coach of the Trinidad and Tobago football team Wim Rijsbergen admits his young charges needs more tough challenges in order to get to the next level and sees it as a good learning experience.
The ‘Soca Warriors’ made up of Pro League and US based players finished second behind Haiti in the recently concluded Digicel Caribbean Cup before taking a two match tour of Central America where they faced Panama and Costa Rica.
Captained by Caledonia AIA midfielder and the only World Cup player Densill Theobald in the squad, Trinidad and Tobago lost 2-1 against Panama and 4-0 against the Costa Ricans.
On the team’s return Rijsbergen told ‘ttproleague.com’, “I told the guys before these matches, we played at one level in the Digicel Caribbean Cup and if we are to go to the next level we will face some problems. We have faced these problems against Panama and Costa Rica with a group of inexperienced players who were good enough for the Digicel Caribbean Cup, but not at the level to face for example Costa Rica and Panama,” said the Dutchman.
“Costa Rica showed us that they are a little ahead of us as we have players who are playing and thinking at a slower pace. All the problems we face in the Digicel Caribbean Cup at a lower level, we faced it at a higher level and we saw it in the results, but it’s normal and good for the players to see these kinds of things. It is a good experience for the guys knowing what they did wrong and also to know that they have to work on their game and fitness and hopefully it would help us develop some players and hopefully they don’t make the same mistakes in the future,” said the national Coach.
Although he was not pleased with the performance by the team the national Coach is still committed to his mission on getting the best possible team together, “We can use some of the guys to reach the higher level and otherwise we are still looking for new ones to give them the opportunity to play. We will then evaluate all these players and make a new list and see what we can do in our other friendly games,” said Rijsbergen.
He also hopes to have some of the foreign based players available to work with the local guys for their next friendly international when they face Chile, “We will face Chile who is a very tough opponent and I hope to have some of the foreign players in the squad because we want to learn and not be used as a sparring partner,” ended the Trinidad and Tobago national coach.