An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Fol­low­ing a 2-0 loss at home to Pe­ru in Wednes­day's in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly, T&T co-head coach Ja­maal Shabaaz was of the opin­ion that while the re­sult was not bad, the team, and by ex­ten­sion the coun­try, needs to have more am­bi­tion.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances which the na­tion­al team has faced post-World Cup 2006, Shabazz said the sup­port­ers could have eas­i­ly swal­lowed the loss and pass it off as "not a bad re­sult."

He, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that the team and its sup­port­ers need­ed to strive fur­ther.

"We need to be more hun­gry, not just as a play­er, not as a coach, but as peo­ple," Shabazz said.

He added, "For now, we'll ac­cept and say this is not bad, but we need to be more am­bi­tious than this go­ing for­ward."

The pair in­di­cat­ed that the ob­jec­tives of the team were both to main­tain pos­ses­sion and to keep a sol­id back­line, which, ac­cord­ing to Shabazz, were fun­da­men­tal­ly met de­spite con­ced­ing two goals.

How­ev­er, he said at cer­tain points the strat­e­gy of main­tain­ing pos­ses­sion was over­done, when the team should have tak­en a more for­ward ap­proach.

"Gen­er­al­ly I felt the ob­jec­tive, be­side the re­sult, was met," Shabazz said.

Adding to ef­fect, co-head coach Hut­son Charles joined: "Like Ja­maal said, at times we over­did. I saw a lot of things we can work on. This game brought it out."

Shabazz in­di­cat­ed that sev­er­al of the se­nior play­ers, in­clud­ing for­mer cap­tain Ken­wyne Jones had an im­pact on the less ex­pe­ri­enced ones. Their ad­vice, even at half-time, of­ten serves a pos­i­tive pur­pose.

"We feel we should give them more free­dom to de­cide, be­cause the prob­lem is not the prob­lem for the coach. The prob­lem is for the play­ers to solve on the pitch. And this we could achieve with a lit­tle more time on the pitch."

Shabazz added he of­ten for­gets who are lo­cal and who are for­eign based, as two groups adapt eas­i­ly in­to train­ing unit. Some for­eign-based play­ers did not re­ceive an in­vi­ta­tion for the match, but he said that may change in up­com­ing friend­ly fix­tures.

The match was T&T's first friend­ly for the year and it is un­der­stood to have been used in the ini­tial stages of prepa­ra­tion for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, which will take place in Ju­ly. T&T qual­i­fied for the tour­na­ment late last year af­ter reach­ing the fi­nal of the CFU Caribbean Cup.

At least two more in­ter­na­tion­al friend­lies are ex­pect­ed be­fore the tour­na­ment. How­ev­er, the op­po­nents and the dates of the match­es are yet to be fi­nalised.