Dear Editor,
Can I offer some advice to our national coach Mr Terry Fenwick?
Firstly, Mr Fenwick, take the blame, accept the defeat as the team selection was a gamble and don’t throw the players under the bus.
Secondly, your game plan was to beat the high pressure by going over the top played directly into the US game plan they wanted us to do that.
Thirdly, what did our players learn from our coaching staff tactically during the game? Because I saw nothing but a personality change.
You were hired to get us to the Gold Cup and the World Cup not to develop, we have a Technical Director for that project.
I'm a believer of our local players so our future is still good. Remember, it is you who told us that you were pleased with the team's preparation and touted the number of goals the team scored in three practice games two weeks ago. We didn't play football on Sunday against the USA, we played tennis ....7-0.
Trying to find positives to take away from the game, well the only positive that I saw, is that the men that he touted as having experience positively cannot play at the highest level as yet.
T&T have more academies now than in previous years so the future is in good hands. Player and coach selection is the critical process for international football that we keep underachieving. More than half of the players were on their offseason, while the others haven't been playing together for more than a year.
What did you really expect from them?
Coach Fenwick, why after training our local players for three months you decided to gamble with the 17 foreign-based players that haven't played any competitive football since last year when the both USL and MLS leagues came to an end. To me, the better move was to take the players that you selected that knew your game plan and then insert some of the foreign-based players in the second half.
Also, why wasn't our other professional goalkeeper Marvin Phillip, who has 78 national caps which means he's very experienced, used in the second half, why?.
The USA has players with Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, and other big-name clubs around the world not only on the rosters but playing. None of them played yesterday (Sunday), but some of the players that did play yesterday (Sunday) and are in negotiations with Swansea, Roma, and other clubs.
The USA has a pay to play model that doesn’t work all of the time to identify low-income players, however, what it does is it creates an economy of youth football that is a billion-dollar industry in the US. The federation also has a foundation of scouts not just in the US but also in Europe identifying US-born players or players born of US parents. It took them decades to get to this point, but they committed.
The country will have setbacks like not qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, but the federation doesn’t stop growing and getting better. The TTFA is 50-100 years behind getting at least to the level where the US is now, and until the country removes all of the egoistical people involved with football who should not be involved, then these are the results that you will continue to get.
I would have taken the local youth players with some senior players who are presently at home (Ataulla) Guerra, (Willis) Plaza, Marcus Joseph and what happened to Che Benny and some of the other youth players with his ability maybe you can mention a few names because I don't know them all and should have never started with so many foreign-based players especially when you never had a chance to see them play some of them should have entered the game in the second half.
Earl "Mango" Pierre
T&T football supporter
St James
WATCH: Analysis of TNT vs USA performance - Arnold Corneal.