Trinidad and Tobago head coach Leo Beenhakker has credited his players for a courageous performance and is firm on his belief that such displays will be transferred into winning results as the “Warriors” continue their journey to the Germany 2006 World Cup.
Beenhakker let his feelings out moments after T&T’s 2-0loss to Mexico in Monterrey on Wednesday night.
“Mexico is a very strong team and we proved that we could play with them but unfortunately it didn’t take us to the end,” Beenhakker told TTFF Media.
“They were better than us . We tried to compensate with a lot of work but we couldn’t stop them. We did a good job but we need to have more ball possession to manage a team like Mexico. No one likes to lose but I think the team did everything it could after having been together for only ten days I don’t think I could ask for much more from the boys and it’s just unfortunate that we are not leaving with something to show from this match,” he added.
The general feeling is that the T&T team, despite the loss, is now a revamped one as was also the consensus among those who saw the match live including the Mexican media. They indicated their thoughts during the post match press conference.
Beenhakker replied to that by saying, “From the DVDs that I saw of the earlier matches and from what I am seeing now there seems to be a difference in the way the team is playing and that means credit must go to the guys because they are doing a better job. But the problem is whether it’s good enough to realize our dream and that’s where we must pull ourselves up even more to ensure that we do realize our dream because it’s still alive. You look at the other teams aside from Mexico and the USA you see that it’s still up for grabs.
“I think this game came a little bit early but at least you can see some progress from the team. We are playing to a philosophy and everyone is trying to do the same thing and do what is asked of them and that really is the win for us up to now ad hopefully we could turn into results at the end.”
The T&T team is scheduled to arrive home on Friday evening out of Miami but midfielder Chris Birchall, Dwight Yorke and Carlos Edwards all returned to England on Thursday.