EL SALVADOR head coach Eric Acuña said more about Trinidad and Tobago’s performance on Wednesday night, and possibly also their women’s youth programme, than defeated T&T coach Ayanna Russell could, following her team’s comprehensive 4-0 defeat to the Central Americans in Group C at the CONCACAF Women’s Under-17 Championship.
For Russell, the focus now is on regrouping and motivating her team to end the tournament with a win against Honduras, who had beaten them 1-0 in first round qualifying.
“We have to play for pride,” said former national defender Russell. “They need to sulk tonight and come to terms with not making the World Cup. But we’re home, and we want a strong result on Saturday.”
Meanwhile, Acuña noted that while T&T’s defence was solid when playing with a low block in their opening 3-0 loss to the USA, it was a different story when they needed to balance defending and attacking.
Against El Salvador, T&T showed more intent to attack but left gaps for the Central Americans to exploit.
“If you don’t teach the girls how to attack you are never going to win a game,” Acuña said. “You have to be good when you have the ball, and when you don’t have the ball.”
T&T’s defensive set-up against both the USA and El Salvador kept the scores level in the first half but didn’t provide an offensive threat.
“Defending with everyone, you are never going to get at the goal,” stated Acuña, who will face his own challenges in El Salvador’s final match against the USA.
Likely fuelled by T&T’s strong performance against lesser opposition in the pre-tournament First Citizens Jewels of the Caribbean Invitational in December, Russell remained confident that her team can be a force in the future. However, after two losses and conceding seven goals, there is little to show for that belief at this stage.
“This team has a lot of potential,” Russell insisted.
However, playing higher opposition than they are accustomed to, T&T have been unable to consistently find talented striker Orielle Martin, who looked frustrated the few times that she had the ball and faced stronger players than the Caribbean girls she normally drifts by.
The El Salvador coach suggested Martin needed more support in link-up -play.
“I think the No.10 (Martin) is a good player. Maybe she needs someone else to play with her because sometimes she was too alone.
“Maybe if she gets the ball close to the objective, she can do more damage to the other teams. But playing in that way she tried to play, alone against four or five players, it is complicated.”
Russell, attributed the team’s struggles to a lack of rhythm.
“We know we can put the ball down and play and we never did that. So, unfortunately, the result didn’t go our way,” she said.
“We know what we can do on the ball and that is the type of team we are, but we just started to lose sight of that.”
Russell’s theory is likely to be tested tomorrow against a Honduras team, that like El Salvador, also like to possess the ball.
The T&T head coach said that whacking long balls towards Martin and Rashada Archer was not the plan against El Salvador. But tested by both tougher conditions and opposition, the young footballers adapted the best they could.
“We were second to every ball, we were never first to the ball,” said Russell. “We didn’t really show enough urgency and the fight that we usually do.”
In summarising Russell added: “We thought that we would be victorious today, but the (result) did not go our way.”
