Young Warriors in Caribbean final
Late goal secures draw with Cuba
By Ian Prescott (Express).
Defender Josiah Trimmingham scored on debut, as Trinidad and Tobago booked a spot in tomorrow’s 2014 Caribbean Men’s Under 20 Championship Final, despite a 1-1 draw with Cuba on Tuesday night at Hasely Crawford, Port of Spain.
Both Group A teams qualified for the CONCACAF leg of qualifying, but Cuba will only play for third in the Caribbean tournament tomorrow, after ending the group in second spot. The Young Warriors ended the group with victories over Suriname (2-1) and Curacao (4-0) and a draw with Cuba. In the final, they are likely to meet Haiti, who needed a point last night to top Group B.
The Young Warriors spent much of Tuesday night chasing a “soft” early goal, conceded in the 10th minute, when goalkeeper Johan Welch was caught off his goal-line by a long shot. Trimmingham’s equaliser only came with two minutes left in normal time, when the big T&T defender got the last touch to put in a free-kick.
The very short Welch, was similarly beaten by Suriname striker Ricardo Fauber at the start of the tournament, and the Cubans appeared to be ready to capitalise on the T&T goalie’s habit of pushing high up—many times outside his penalty area—to negate a lack of height.
Frank Lopez let fly from deep infield, when seeing the Welch almost at the edge of his penalty area, and scored. Cuba never created another good chance.
“We allowed a soft goal,” stated T&T head coach Derek King, who admitted to some worry that his goalkeeper has now been twice similarly beaten. “There is a bit of concern, and I believe he was a bit lackadaisical. But he is a good guy, consistent and likes to work hard.”
King added that going forward to the CONCACAF stage, T&T will be opening the selection process to gather the best team to represent the country. He further added that there are still a couple of goalkeepers to look at.
For the most part, Cuba were disciplined and compact behind the ball, but not adventurous going forward, and never quite created another scoring opportunity. But, they did stop the better Trinidad and Tobago team from dominating the wide positions, as in previous matches. William Bennett, who is in charge of Cuba’s entire coaching programme, admitted the Cubans mainly played for a point, and to win if possible.
Speaking through local interpreter Tristan Benjamin, he said: “Due to the (result of the) first game, we knew that we needed only a draw to move forward. We played a strategic game,” stated Bennett, who even admitted to putting in their tallest goalkeeper Elier Pozo, simply to eliminate T&T’s cross balls.
“We played against one of the toughest teams in the Caribbean. They play almost total football.” Bennett said of the Young Warriors. “Trinidad players are very explosive and they play very good one on one. So the best thing was to play two against one, to avoid them from coming into the area.”
Even so, T&T dominated possession, creating the odd chance along the way. Replacing the rested Kadeem Corbin up front, lanky 16-year-old striker Nicholas Dillon had two early chances, including when he struck the crossbar two minutes before the Cuban goal. And having scored explosively against Suriname and Curacao, midfielder Jabari Mitchell was off the mark with a hat-trick of close misses against Cuba. Not that the Cubans gave him more than a split second to shoot.
“We met a Cuba tonight that really did not create any chances’” King said. “We created four or five chances, which we did not put away.”
“Today against Cuba we made a couple of changes to the starting team to give a couple of guys (a run) to have a look at them,” King added. He commended young Dillon for his first showing for the national team, despite shouts in the crowd for Corbin’s inclusion, when T&T were losing.
“He (Dillon) did well. He held the ball well. He created a couple of scoring opportunities where he did not take the chances. All in all, it wasn’t bad,” King said.