The defense wasn't to blame as much as many of you claim. The marking on the corners was poor. Not sure who was supposed to pick up the scorers..defenders, midfielders, forwards? Dunno, The defense most times kept its shape and made some vital tackles. They looked it a bit flat at times.
However, I central midfield was non existant defensively. The Colombian playmaker was free every time to collect the ball, face our goal and string passes under little pressure. All game long. I am amazed we never put someone to mark him out of the 2nd half. That is like playing against France and purposefully not marking Zidane, or T&T and not marking Latas. You could have the best defense in the world..you will get picked apart time after time. Not sure if playing deeper would have helped or been more detrimental given the space the midfield was giving up.
Real bad loss...but all in all I am happy the boys are there instead of watching it on TV. This is great for T&T football. We get real rough up..but there will be a few who will step up to another level because of this experience.
BIG SIDE
T&T FOREVER
Yeah when the midfield cannot possess the ball for periods at a time, and the forwards get no service, the wingers commit to the attack and don't get the ball, there will be glaring gaps in the field for the opposition to come strolling through when the play breaks down. All the comments here seem to put the blame of our defense, but our defense actually held position for the most part, and they were constantly on the back foot because the other areas of the field don't make it any easier for them.
End of day, we are behind the curve in every aspect of the game, and it shows- size & physicality, technique, movement off the ball, maintaining shape, quickness on and off the ball, creativity & imagination, robustness in 50/50 tackles & individual skill (yes individual skill too)...but like I said from the beginning, only a dreamer would expect us to come into this tournament and win games- it's no secret that our football is behind the curve in every dept, and until the footballing infrastructure in T&T is revamped it will always be the case- the biggest benefit for us coming out of this would be for a few of our youth players to make that step to the next level- because I'm convinced that there are one or two youths in the team who have the potential to do it- I just pray that they get the needed break. It starts there- we qualify for these youth tourneys, and a few players step up to the next level, if we continue to qualify consistently, we can possibly get a few to keep making that step up- the more players we have playing at a higher level- the better our senior team will be down the road as they will have a mix of the older heads and some youths who play professionally. If none of these boys are on our WC 2010 team, that'd be a shame.
Until significant improvements in football development take place in T&T, we cannot hope for success at the youth level- the most we can do is hope that a few youth players get the exposure and opportunities to step up to a higher level and feed our senior team piece by piece and give us some continuity at the senior level.