With all the threats laid at the feet of head­coach Rus­sell Lat­apy over the past few weeks, and the idea of as­sess­ing match­es in a win-loss man­ner, it would not sur­prise me if the So­ca War­riors take the first po­si­tion in the group com­pe­ti­tion which kick-off this af­ter­noon at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, at 5 pm. Al­ready, I can hear a few shouts of dis­agree­ment fol­lowed by the fact that the team drew with Guyana, and lost to Ja­maica re­cent­ly. Hav­ing seen the game against Ja­maica on Oc­to­ber 10 in Kingston, I recog­nised some progress in cer­tain el­e­ments of our game which were not ad­dressed in pre­vi­ous match­es. I pre­fer to make a judge­ment of the lo­cal team on the ba­sis of what I saw in the Ja­maica match. Yes, I un­der­stand in­con­sis­ten­cy, but one must al­so recog­nise the im­proved fea­tures and view them as part of the over­all plan. It is my hope that a mem­ber of the coach­ing staff is man­dat­ed to take a close look at all op­po­nents and utilise the knowl­edge in or­der to re­duce the ef­fec­tive­ness of op­pos­ing teams, all of which do not have a great his­to­ry of top­pling the So­ca War­riors.

Mak­ing com­ments about win­ning and the team play­ing for each oth­er are in­spi­ra­tional but must be ac­com­pa­nied by spe­cif­ic plans which must be im­ple­ment­ed strate­gi­cal­ly on the field of play. Play­ing at home must mean an ad­van­tage for T&T, where most of the play­ers ply their trade on a reg­u­lar ba­sis for lo­cal clubs. The se­lec­tion process needs care­ful at­ten­tion. I be­lieve that the use of two in­ex­pe­ri­enced cen­tral de­fend­ers in an away game against a team of Ja­maica's qual­i­ty, had brought some in­de­ci­sive­ness be­tween the two young­sters fol­lowed by some lack of con­fi­dence in each oth­er dur­ing the course of the game. An ex­pe­ri­enced Julius James should have ac­com­pa­nied one of the young­sters, while a more sta­ble de­fense-line in the cen­tre of the field needs a sol­id deep mid­field ball­win­ner, whose dis­tri­b­u­tion of pass­es must con­trol the ma­jor­i­ty of at­tack­ing plays. The ex­pe­ri­ence of Trent Noel seems the ap­pro­pri­ate choice for that job, if on­ly be­cause Os­ei Teles­ford has not been con­sid­ered good enough for this squad.

The in­clu­sion of the now fit Hec­tor Sam on the right will be es­sen­tial, es­pe­cial­ly as De­von Jorsling ap­pears to be at the top of his game. What a pity the lead­ing goalscor­er of last year in the T&T Pro League Ker­ry Bap­tiste has lost his way (tem­porar­i­ly, we hope) which may cause coach Lat­apy to go in search of Jagdeosingh, the next best strik­er in the team. The coach­ing staff seems sweet on the abil­i­ty of the left-foot­ed Keon Daniel, but his per­for­mances seem in­suf­fi­cient to com­mand a place in the Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers start­ing out­fit in re­cent Cham­pi­ons League play and by ex­ten­sion, mod­er­ate per­for­mances for the lo­cal squad. Hav­ing said all of that, as­sess­ments of op­po­nents and game plan will be key to de­feat the op­po­si­tion, to­geth­er with spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions added to su­pe­ri­or tal­ent of our play­ers to take us to the fi­nal round in Mar­tinique. Good luck, So­ca War­riors.