So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve says there's a lot of stuff to be dis­ap­point­ed in from his team's 2-2 draw against Grena­da in their Group B open­er of the Sec­ond Round of Con­ca­caf Qual­i­fiers for the 2026 USA/Cana­da/Mex­i­co FI­FA World Cup at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day.

The So­ca War­riors found them­selves trail­ing 2-0 to Grena­da via a brace from Myles Hip­poly­te, in the 24th minute from the penal­ty spot and four min­utes lat­er from a left-foot­ed vol­ley.

Spurred on by a crowd of 8,500 spec­ta­tors, T&T mount­ed a fight back with Cana­da-based duo, Ryan Telfer scor­ing in the 41st for a 2-1 half-time deficit be­fore Re­on Moore fired in the equalis­er in the 74th to save T&T from a a dis­as­trous start to their bid to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, their sec­ond af­ter mak­ing their de­but at Ger­many 2006.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the match a re­lieved Eve said, "Our dis­ci­pline was poor and I thought that the game was very open and there were a lot of chances on both sides and prob­a­bly a draw is the best we could have got out of the game the way we played."

He added, "We cre­at­ed a lot of chances through the mid­field ac­tu­al­ly, and in fact, the mid­field was a lit­tle bit too open if any­thing and it's on­ly when we so­lid­i­fied the mid­field in the sec­ond half by bring­ing on Ram­per­sad (An­dre) it then gave us a plat­form for Nathaniel James and Re­on Moore and Telfer and them to go for­ward and cre­ate chances.

"So, some­times you have to get the bal­ance of the mid­field be­cause we had a lot of at­tack­ing play­ers in­clud­ing For­tune (Ajani) and we on­ly played with one de­fen­sive mid­field­er to start the game, and prob­a­bly the guys didn't click to­day (Wednes­day) in terms of Pow­der (Noah) and For­tune, but we played with two at­tack­ing mid­field­ers and one hold­ing mid­field­er."

With re­gards to the prepa­ra­tion for the match Eve again lament­ed the short time he had with his play­ers say­ing, "It's a dif­fi­cult thing when you on­ly have one and half days with the squad. You know it's very dif­fi­cult when you get such a short space of time and we com­plained about it be­fore the game and it's re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to get the co­he­sion.

"Grena­da, I think they were here since last week Wednes­day and they had more days than us and you could see that from the way how the co­he­sion of their group as op­posed to ours."

Eve al­so ques­tioned the penal­ty call by Guatemalan ref­er­ee Mario Es­co­bar say­ing, "I thought that Daniel (Phillips) hand was ac­tu­al­ly on his body and it was shock­ing to me that the ref­er­ee gave a penal­ty for that one.

"And again we've been go­ing down 2-0 in every game that we play and I keep say­ing that our de­fence is a lit­tle bit porous and that's an area that we want to strength­en up, but our hands are tied and we can on­ly use the play­ers that we have and no mat­ter what com­bi­na­tion that we play we al­ways seem to go down 2-0 in the first half and then come back strong in the sec­ond half.

"De­fen­sive­ly, I know peo­ple ac­cuse me of be­ing a de­fen­sive coach but you see how we opened up the game to­day and the rea­son why is that be­cause I'm re­al­is­tic about the play­ers that we have and we are more dan­ger­ous on the counter-at­tack as op­posed to when we try to play open foot­ball.

"We were try­ing to win the game in the end. We were tak­ing out play­ers like Shan­non Gomez and at one time we had five strik­ers on the pitch and we were try­ing to win the game.

"We had Re­al Gill play­ing on the right, Nathaniel James down the mid­dle, Re­on Moore as well as Telfer so were were ba­si­cal­ly try­ing to win the game and af­fect the game in a pos­i­tive way."

Asked about the non-in­tro­duc­tion of vet­er­an strik­er Kevon Wood­ley, the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League's top scor­er with 16 goals this sea­son and who net­ted in his first two in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ances for the So­ca War­riors last month in back-to-back match­es ver­sus Guyana at the same Mu­cu­rapo venue, Eve replied, "We could al­ways say if, but and maybe. We de­cid­ed not to play him based on the phys­i­cal na­ture of the game and we want­ed to use more quick­er and sharp­er play­ers and that's the on­ly rea­son."

Con­cern­ing the fi­nal re­sult, Eve not­ed that both teams could have come away with the win.

He said, "The game could have gone any side, the game could have gone for them and the game could have gone for us based on the chances that both teams cre­at­ed."

The T&T coach in de­fend­ing his team's slow and lethar­gic first-half dis­play was quick to ad­mit that team chem­istry is a prob­lem.

He said, "Gelling is an is­sue and un­for­tu­nate­ly we re­al­ly didn't con­nect with each oth­er tonight (Wednes­day) and I think the first three tried to play the ball a lit­tle too tight and they didn't spread the ball to Levi (Gar­cia) and them ear­ly enough and we didn't build a rhythm in the game."

De­spite not com­ing away with the ex­pect­ed win Eve not­ed that his team didn't lose which is the most im­por­tant thing.

Draw­ing com­par­i­son to the World Cup cam­paign of 2006, Eve the most capped T&T play­er ever added: "I think when we qual­i­fied in 2006 (Ger­many World Cup) it was the same thing with the Cos­ta Ri­ca game which we had, so the cam­paign start­ed the same way and we end­ed up qual­i­fy­ing.

"This is one game and the oth­er teams in the group, they still have to play, so there's a lot to play for and this is just the first game, but the win­dow didn't help us I think.

"I said this be­fore, the win­dow is from June 3 to June 10 and we play the first cou­ple of days in the win­dow, and the games could have been stretched out a lit­tle bit fur­ther for us and un­for­tu­nate­ly that's the hand that we were dealt.

"So, ba­si­cal­ly we had the full team from June 3 to try and put them to­geth­er and make co­he­sions and it didn't hap­pen tonight (Wednes­day) but hope­ful­ly we have a cou­ple more days to work with the guys and hope­ful­ly, we will get more co­he­sion with the group."

T&T left yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) for St Kitts & Nevis to face Ba­hamas at the St Kitts & Nevis Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter, Bas­seterre, at 5.30 pm on Sat­ur­day while Grena­da plays at home against Cos­ta Ri­ca on Sun­day at the Ki­rani James Ath­let­ics Sta­di­um, St George’s, 5 pm.

Last night, Cos­ta Ri­ca host­ed St Kitts & Nevis at Es­ta­dio Na­cional, San Jose in the first match for both teams while St Kitts & Nevis en­ter­tains Ba­hamas on Tues­day (June 11) at Warn­er Park Foot­ball Sta­di­um, Bas­seterre from 4 pm in the oth­er Group B in the win­dow.

Teams

T&T: 22.Den­zil Smith (GK); 14.Shan­non Gomez (10.Re­al Gill 78th), 2.Aubrey David (capt), 17.Justin Gar­cia, 6.An­dre Ray­mond (3.Tris­ton Hodge 78th); 8.Noah Pow­der (16.Alvin Jones 46th), 4.Daniel Phillips, 20.Ajani For­tune (9.Nathaniel James 66th); 13.Re­on Moore, 11.Levi Gar­cia (18.An­dre Ram­per­sad 46th), 7.Ryan Telfer.

Un­used subs: 1.Christo­pher Biggette (GK), 21.Aaron Enill (GK), 5.Du­ane Muck­ette, 12.Stef­fen Yeates, 15.Dan­taye Gilbert, 19.Mal­colm Shaw, 23.Kevon Wood­ley.

Coach: An­gus Eve

Grena­da: 1.Ja­son Bel­fon (GK); 2.Ben­jamin Et­ti­enne (13.Stef­fon Abra­ham 87th), 4.Kay­den Har­rack, 5.Omar Beck­les (capt), 21.Josh Gabriel; 19.Kwaz­im Theodore, 8.Myles Hip­poly­te (23.Ja­mal Charles 87th); 15.Jer­maine Fran­cis (10.Say­drel Lewis 79th), 11.Shavon John-Brown (7.Ro­mar Frank 87th), 20.Dar­ius John­son (16.Keis­hon Clarke 87th), 9.Lu­cas Akins.

Un­used subs: 12.Chad Phillip (GK), 22.Tr­ishawn Thomas (GK), 3.Brady Charles, 6.Dor­rel Pierre, 14.Jamie Kabu­usu, 17.Trevon Williams, 18.Vi­jay Val­cin.

Coach: Shal­rie Joseph