Trinidad and Tobago's senior footballers will resume preparations on Monday at the Hasely Crawford Stadium for their upcoming Digicel Caribbean Cup group phase in Port of Spain.
The home-based players along with San Jose Earthquakes forward Cornell Glen returned home from Kingston on Monday night while the other overseas pros Keon Daniel, Julius James and Marshall all flew back to their respective clubs.
The feedback following the match, particularly from the Jamaican camp indicated that they were not impressed by the home team’s showing in the 1-0 win on Sunday but moreso felt that the “Soca Warriors” had given a much improved showing that when the both teams met at the Marvin Lee Stadium a few weeks ago which resulted in a 3-1 win for the “Reggae Boyz..
T&T debutant defender Yohance Marshall was noted as one of the finds for the T&T team as he held the backline together with his strong showing alongside Daneil Cyrus, Kern Cupid and Jovin Jones.
“Personally it was good to get my debut out of the way. It was something I was waiting on for a long time,” Marshall told TTFF Media. “It was disappointing to come away with a 1-0 loss because I thought we played well enough to get at least a draw.
We played well together as a unit and I felt comfortable with the guys. The match wasn’t easy because obviously Jamaica had no intentions of losing at home but I thought we gave them a very good fight,” said the La Galaxy defender.
Team captain Clyde Leon added: “From the last Jamaica game to now I feel we have made some good progress. You can see some of the things we do in training now showing up in our game and that was pleasing.
We had some chances to put away but unfortunately it didn’t happen. We are aiming to peak in time for the Digicel Cup and right now I think we’re heading there. We just have to keep up the work and keep on believing that we can go all the way.”
Goalie Jan Michael Williams was called upon to pull off a couple close stops during the encounter and held his own aside from the penalty strike.
“As a goalkeeper you always strive to do better than your last match and I’ve been working hard and trying my best out there. Overall as a team I think I can safely say that in all aspects of our play you are seeing progress. The team has definitely stepped up its game over the past few matches.”
Glen meantime, who hasn’t been playing full nineties for his club in recent weeks, understands that he will only be fully match fit by playing regularly and hence the reason Latapy kept him on for the entire match at the “Office”.
“I haven’t been playing every match at San Jose but I felt good out there today with the full 90 under my belt. I thought we give a really good showing because it’s not easy for any team to go to Jamaica and have it their way.
We have seen the big teams like Mexico and USA all struggle to play their normal match or dominate the home team. We never allowed Jamaica to dominate us or to pull away and credit to the coaching staff and the players for this performance.
I would definitely like to meet them again in the Digicel Cup Finals. First up though we need to focus on the next set of games in the Digicel prelims and sharpen up on a couple things and be able to finish off teams,” Glen added.
The majority of the team will continue in training while Latapy and his staff will determine over the coming days whether any other player will be looked at during the upcoming Digicel preliminary phase in Port of Spain starting on November 2.
That group will include Haiti and two undetermined teams with the top two finishers qualifying for the Digicel Caribbean Cup finals in Martinique in early December.