Alvin Corneal

Yes, the pain of de­feat should be some­thing which should bring out the best in ath­letes in any sport.

Those of us who sat and watched a young T&T squad of play­ers take just about ten min­utes to dis­play a lev­el of dom­i­nance in their open­ing match.

Be­fore Cana­da was able to string pass­es to­wards its op­po­nent's goal, it had to deal with be­ing over­shad­owed in the mid­field by For­tune, Seecha­ran and Levi Gar­cia.

The fi­nal pass­es had the po­ten­tial for Akeem Gar­cia and Brent Sam to­wards fin­ish­ing at­tacks and take a lead.

Sud­den­ly, the de­fi­cien­cy of weak shoot­ing be­came ob­vi­ous, with shots sail­ing over the bar from eigh­teen me­tres and saw six shots go every­where ex­cept with­in the rec­tan­gle.

In the most un­nat­ur­al man­ner when T&T seemed well in con­trol the US ref­er­ee brought some form of an­noy­ance to the young play­ers when de­fend­er Archer played a per­fect slide tack­le while chas­ing the ball which was played in­to the T&T penal­ty area.

I felt that the ref­er­ee had erred and gave a penal­ty against the TT de­fend­er when his time­ly clear­ance brought a sur­prise de­ci­sion against the tall cen­tral de­fend­er, sim­ply be­cause the star Cana­di­an play­er Boakai fell as he tried to get the first touch.

I was even more pos­i­tive when I re­alised that he was not well poised to see ex­act­ly what hap­pened and may have en­joyed an op­ti­cal il­lu­sion.

The big­ger mis­take came from the T&T de­fence all of whom ap­peared to doze off in a short sleep when the ball was spot­ted at the edge of the penal­ty area, rolled it with Bus­tos' hand be­fore slid­ing it about two me­tres to the right.

Not a sin­gle de­fend­er made an ef­fort to get in­to an ag­gres­sive mode and rush for­ward.

In­stead, they stood idly by and saw Hamil­ton crash a right foot­er in­to the top right cor­ner for a first goal, clear­ly against the run of play.

Los­ing the zeal to fight on was much of a fac­tor for the bal­ance of the game, al­though some chances came the way of Creed and his team.

Cana­da start­ed the wast­ing time type of ap­proach and re­ceived no call from the ref­er­ee oth­er than a warn­ing.

The sec­ond goal for Cana­da was an­oth­er case of a team mak­ing its own de­ci­sion on an off­side which the ref did not en­dorse, caus­ing Hamil­ton to re­ceive a free shot at goal which the keep­er par­ried back to the kick­er for him to slot an open goal.

A loss which it could have avoid­ed and Cana­da was the one which got the luck at im­por­tant times.

Forty eight hours af­ter­wards, there seemed a new thrust in the same play­ers from the first match, and de­spite a penal­ty which was award­ed to Cos­ta Ri­ca, and was missed, sent some pos­i­tive mes­sages for T&T.

While Cos­ta Ri­ca was forced to give up the mid­field dom­i­nance to An­dre For­tune, Bren­dan Creed, and Levi Gar­cia, the back four turned in some fine dis­plays of de­fen­sive work.

Shan­non Gomez was again the mod­el of con­sis­ten­cy and could have been much more ef­fec­tive if Kishun Seecha­ran had re­leased the ball ear­ly rather than try with­out any suc­cess to drib­ble his op­po­nents, two of whom had worked him out eas­i­ly.

Then, in the 32nd minute, An­dre For­tune com­plet­ed his mas­ter skill with a well di­rect­ed dri­ve from twen­ty me­tres to give T&T the lead. The young­ster brought the crowd to their feet and set the two large flags in the sta­di­um wav­ing lusti­ly.

The ear­ly lead seemed to have in­vit­ed lethar­gy in the team for the fi­nal min­utes lead­ing to half-time. Cos­ta Ri­ca near­ly scored on two oc­ca­sions when Ar­ing­ton Tor­res missed two op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Sure­ly, a dress­ing room dis­cus­sion should have awak­ened the lads, but non­cha­lance crept pos­i­tive­ly in­to the first five min­utes of the sec­ond half. It brought sub­sti­tu­tion, and An­drews re­placed Seecha­ran, a move which should have come much ear­li­er. His first run with the ball to the de­fend­ers in­cit­ed a foul tack­le which was as close to a penal­ty as one could get, but le­git­i­mate­ly got a free kick from in­side right po­si­tion. Brent Sam swerved a mag­nif­i­cent shot over the bar­ri­er and the ball beat the div­ing Jara to­wards.

A third goal seemed in­evitable, but did not ma­te­ri­alise, as some close calls were ei­ther saved by the Cos­ta Ri­can keep­er, or sol­id de­fen­sive work by Mi­ran­da.

Nev­er­the­less, the vic­to­ry was sweet and the joy­ful mo­ment for the young­sters could on­ly be en­joyed if they make it to the next round.

They de­serve to go for­ward, but it will be sil­ly to ig­nore the Cos­ta Ri­cans whose ball abil­i­ty was prob­a­bly bet­ter than their op­po­nents'.

We wait pa­tient­ly on the fi­nal round match where a draw or vic­to­ry for Cana­da will take them to the next round with T&T.

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