National Senior Team head coach Russell Latapy gave credit where it was deserving of his Senior Team players following Wednesday’s friendly international 4-1 win over Antigua/Barbuda but warns that the team will only progress with more practice on the international stage.
As such he is looking forward to upcoming friendlies against Jamaica, Belize and Guyana ahead of the 2010 Digicel Caribbean Cup.
The Soca Warriors will face Jamaica at the Marvin Lee Stadium on August 11 before travelling to meet Guyana on August 28, Belize on September 8, Antigua/Barbuda on September 19 and Jamaica on October 10. T&T’s preliminary phase of the Digicel Caribbean Cup is scheduled for Grenada on October 17, 19 and 21.
Speaking at the post game press conference, Latapy said:
“It was a good solid performance, most importantly for us there are certain aspects of our game we are working on and I was quite pleased with a lot of the things that I saw tonight. This is preparation for the Digicel tournament and there are still a lot of things we need to work on.
“I was pretty much satisfied. Some things we were good at and some things we were not. I was very happy with the way we were getting the ball back close to the opponent goal tonight. That is one of the things we tried to identify before the game,” he added.
In terms of what he sees needs continuous improvement, Latapy commented: “Just our general, all round game where we are still making a lot of basic errors. I thought they (Antigua) were a solid, hard working team and organized well enough. Again, we moved the ball well tonight and that made the difference.”
Latapy spoke of the effect of double goalscorer Kevon Carter in the T&T attack.
“We have a player in Kevon who is very quick with a great deal of ability so if we could get it down the right side then we can do it and create the goalscoring opportunities and tonight was that kind of game.”
“We are giving everybody the opportunity as we are in a process of rebuilding. I don’t want to single out anybody because I thought everybody played well. We will take every game one game at a time and tonight was a decent performance. We want to win every international game even if it’s a friendly.
“I want to have the opportunity to have a look at all of our players in international situation. Some of the players need to play and know what is right and wrong and get the experience.
Asked to comment on his decision to continue playing the likes of aging players in Densill Theobald and Trent Noel in the midfield, Latapy explained: “The reality is that when you’re playing football and you want to implement certain things you still need experience especially in the middle of the park to implement these things, My point of view is that I’m trying to get players on the national team who deserve to be.
So in saying that it doesn’t matter how old or how young you are, once you deserve it then you will get the chance to be on the national team.”