National women’s coach Damian Briggs is attempting to block out the “noise” for his players ahead of their final Group F encounter against El Salvador on April 17 at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain.
Victory for the home team will ensure they advance to the final round of the qualifiers, a stage that will feature giants Canada and the United States.
Briggs’ charges came from two goals down to hold Honduras to a 2-2 draw at the Estadio Chelato Ucles in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. That result followed a comprehensive 5-0 drubbing of Barbados in December at the Kensington Oval, Barbados, leaving T&T in second place with four points. El Salvador currently leads the group with six points, meaning the T&T girls must win this encounter to progress as group winners and join seven other nations in the final play-off.
Shortly after resuming preparations, Briggs, a UEFA A-licensed coach, emphasised his desire to shield the squad from unreasonable expectations.
“I think, for me, I’ve always approached every game the same, as professionally as I can,” said Briggs. “And yes, I know the magnitude of what we want to achieve by getting results, but I try to go with the same approach to it. I’m always alert to the fine details that can help us.
“That comes from working closely with the staff, looking at the opposition through analysis work, and then going on to the training pitch and trying to prepare to train to play how we want to play against the opposition. So what I try to do is to keep the big noise away from the players and the staff so that we just continue working the way we’ve worked for the last two games and just try to make the improvements as we go along,” explained Briggs, who brings over 10 years of coaching experience from the academies of Norwich City FC and Charlton Athletic FC in England.
He noted that analysis remains key: “As always, you look for areas that you can exploit against the opposition when you do the analysis work. There are always areas that we think we can go and try to exploit. At the same time, we have to look also at what they do and have respect for what they do. Not a fear, but a respect for what they do.”
According to Briggs, “That way, that would help us from a professional standpoint to prepare to approach the game the way we need to approach it to get the desired result that we want.”
The El Salvadorians are without a loss in their two matches to date. In their first game, they trounced Honduras 3-0 at the Estadio Jorge ‘El Magico’ Gonzalez in San Salvador and gave a 13-0 drubbing to Barbados at the Estadio Nacional Las Delicias in San Tecla.
Briggs sidestepped questions regarding the inclusion of striker Asha James, who was omitted from the previous two matchday squads, stating simply that he will pick his best available side
He said, “Our focus is just on the El Salvador game and being as prepared as we can for it and doing what we need to do as a collective. I think with that, as I said before, I try to block the noise out as much as I can from the players because I don’t want the players to freely start thinking, ‘We could do this,’ or ‘We’re the only team that’s got a chance’ or whatever.
“I don’t want the players coming in with that sort of heavy burden. I just want them to come in, be themselves, be able to train as they normally would train and give all of themselves. My job is to get that team available, if possible. Certain players, I’m not going to comment on.
But we just want to work with the players available, the best players that are there, and try to put together the best team possible to go into the game against El Salvador.”
