COACH Bertille St Clair's tactics will be under scrutiny today when the national Technical Committee submit their report on the recent performances of the 'Soca Warriors' at the Digicel Caribbean Cup from February 20-24 in Barbados.
The Technical Committee, chaired by Rudy Thomas, also includes Technical Director Lincoln Phillips, Alvin Henderson and Muhammad Isa. Today, the committee will present their evaluations to the Executive Committee of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) at a meeting from 5 p.m. at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya. Among those invited to the meeting are Soca Warriors coach St Clair, assistant-coach Ron La Forrest and manager Richard Brathwaite.
Yesterday, TTFF president Oliver Camps stated that the purpose of the meeting was, among other things, to evaluate the Soca Warriors' performances both in the World Cup game against the United States and at the Digicel Caribbean Cup in Barbados, and also to make recommendations to improve the T&T team before the next World Cup game against Guatemala on March 26.
Cautious as usual, Camps would not say whether the outcome of the report would determine whether St Clair would remain as coach of the team. However, Camps said that he too felt that the Soca Warriors needed to improve significantly if they are to be successful during the World Cup qualifying campaign.
"Like everyone else, we are disappointed that we are not playing better, but at the same time we have qualified for the Gold Cup," he said. " I would have liked us to be playing at a higher level at this time."
Meanwhile, Technical Director Phillips, said that today's meeting was one of the recent programmes which the TTFF had established and similar exercises had also been done recently following the National Under-17's unsuccessful attempt in January to qualify for the FIFA World Under-17 Football Championships.
"We will not be using this meeting to jump down on the coach," Phillips insisted. "We are just looking at what was done, and what could have been done better."
Phillips added that he wanted the meeting to be as informal as possible, so that affairs concerning the Soca Warriors could be discussed in an environment that was not filled with tension and hostility. He said that the meeting should be used to build the team.
"I think in recent times our focus has been on some of the wrong things.
"I think our focus now should be to look at the team that played United States and see how we can improve the national team technically and tactically," Phillips said.