Sidebar

19
Fri, Apr

Typography
National coach Bertille St Clair was finally able to smile over the performance of United States-based striker Cornell Glen, but has warned that the "Soca Warriors" need to be more clinical in their finishing on goal.
Speaking after Trinidad and Tobago got five goals past Puerto Rico in their opening Group D Digicel Cup fixture at the Marvin Lee Stadium on Wednesday, St Clair chose not to take too much out of the win but is hoping the form will only get better going into today's second match against Grenada at the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium, Marabella from 8 p.m.
"It was not a bad result because a win is a win. But it's only in Trinidad that they prefer to play bad and win than play good and probably lose," St Clair told Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (T&TFF) media officer Shaun Fuentes after the victory.

"I thought the youngsters did well even though we still have a long way to go.

"It was good to see young Cornell Glen finally coming good with the hat-trick and I liked the return of (Kerwyn) Jemmott and (Leslie) Fitzpatrick also had a good debut. Keyeno Thomas and Cyd Gray also did pretty well," St Clair added.
Looking ahead to the Grenadians, he mentioned that T&T would hopefully come even better on the day.
"We are taking one game at a time. Playing two days later is going to be tough but we are all playing under the same conditions."

Commenting on the recent efforts to have collective analysis and suggestions by some of the country's top coaches and officials, St Clair said: "Sometimes too many cooks spoil the broth but hopefully we can get some positives out of this or the benefit of the team and football on a whole.

"Many people are calling for more local players but you will know that sometimes once or twice for the week we get these players from their clubs and in one instance a club even asked me to come to their sessions and coach the players. But I have no quarrel with what is taking place. I am the coach and once the people appreciate that then there's no problem. I repeat that hopefully there will be some good coming out of it."

St Clair, having already commented earlier in the week on David Nakhid's appointment as assistant coach, had more to add, saying: "I think he will bring that extra drive into the team. He has the sort of principles that I believe in and I will hope that he can spread that throughout the team."

Also in Wednesday's game, Joe Public's Derek King captained and scored for the first time in the senior team uniform.
"It's always a pleasure to win convincingly and for me captaining the team for the first time made it an even bigger honour. The conditions were tough but we came through well and I think the team can only get better from here on," King said.