The T&T team in training in Changwon on Saturday. PHOTO courtesy TTFF Media
BY ALVIN CORNEAL
Some will call it a rude awakening for our young footballers. Others will refer to it as a disappointing appearance to the FIFA World U17 tournament. There are those who will claim that they knew the results before the matches were played.
Funnily enough, everyone was correct in making their own assessments of our national U17s in Seoul, Korea.
It is not unusual to expect the best from the team we support, providing that we are aware of what is considered the best for T&T in this arena, where the big guns of the football world, seem as uncertain as ourselves as to what they can expect from their own youngsters.
Sitting and watching the matches for a Trini supporter was not just like watching a movie, but there was emotion involved among those who saw this stage as a huge one in the lives of these teenagers.
We saw Ghana score three goals in forty minutes and pondered as to what kind of scoreline will the end result be. It ended 4-1, a relief for the fans who felt that it would be much more.
Many even missed the recognition of the small nation of T&T holding the two-time winners to a 1-1 in the second half and earning 51 percent of the possession.
If we accepted Ghana’s absolute physical superiority and ball dominance in the first half, it would have been equally as fair to admire the courage and determination of the new kids on the block, T&T, who would have come away with valuable lessons from the exercise.
Columbia was five-time better on goals to the Young Soca Warriors, who went to the half time whistle trailing by one goal. To a realist, that would have bothered the Columbians, who were aiming to win the group and move to the round of 16.
Maybe our emotions took a beating when we succumbed to a second goal in the 60th minute and dropped our heads in despair, losing the gist of this essential exercise of learning for the future and allowing a mistake to be ineffective to the mindset of the player.
The Germany experience must have been something extraordinary for these youngsters.
Please, don’t berate them for what must have been a learning experience. If we do, then we shall be as guilty as the mums and dads of these admirable young men, whose only major fault is that they must feel pain and disappointment along the process of a learning experience which should benefit the game and the country in the future.
Even for the coaching staff, the experience was vital, whether it was about the hot climate, the vast time change, the selection of age group teams in the context of how the choice of players was made in the original stages.
©2005-2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited
