​"Dif­fer­ent lev­els" is how De­fence Force coach De­vorn Jorsling de­scribed the gap be­tween his team and their Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) cam­paign­ers, the Philadel­phia Union, fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s 5-0 drub­bing in round one of the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

​The re­sult leaves the 23-time lo­cal cham­pi­ons with the daunt­ing task of need­ing a 6-0 vic­to­ry to ad­vance when the teams meet for the sec­ond leg next Thurs­day at Sub­aru Park in Philadel­phia. Wide­ly con­sid­ered the best team in lo­cal foot­ball, De­fence Force had an ear­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty to put their op­po­nents on the back foot; how­ev­er, a one-on-one chance for Kathon St Hillaire was de­flect­ed wide by the out­stretched boot of goal­keep­er An­drew Rick.

​The Union as­sert­ed to­tal dom­i­nance there­after, scor­ing al­most at will. Re­flect­ing on the per­for­mance, Jorsling said, Philadel­phia is ahead of them.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, you will be dis­ap­point­ed af­ter los­ing 5-0, but you have to be hon­est. In terms of the De­fence Force and Philadel­phia, there are dif­fer­ent lev­els. I'm re­al­ly proud of the guys in terms of them nev­er giv­ing up.

“What I'm dis­ap­point­ed with is that we know they were re­al­ly good from the dead-ball play, and for them to score four goals from dead balls, I'm dis­ap­point­ed in that. But this is the lev­el. What we could do is, and what we will be do­ing is, work­ing hard to reach this stage again the next time around, and hope­ful­ly go one bet­ter, but I was proud of the guys for the ef­fort and the work thus far,” Jorsling said.

De­fence Force cur­rent­ly sits atop the 12-team Tier 1 stand­ings with 39 points, re­main­ing un­beat­en in the do­mes­tic sea­son. How­ev­er, Jorsling’s com­ments sug­gest­ed an ac­cep­tance of the dif­fi­cul­ty of a sec­ond-leg come­back. The Army/Coast Guard/Civil­ian com­bi­na­tion team last ap­peared in the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup in 2002. While Jorsling ad­mit­ted the re­turn to the big stage was sig­nif­i­cant, he stressed the need for im­prove­ment.

“When we analyse Philadel­phia, the play­ers, I think they won the Sup­port­ers’ Shield in the US three years in a row, so you have to give re­spect where it's due. The job was to make sure and try to be in the tie for the sec­ond leg, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, it didn't hap­pen that way, and all that is foot­ball.

“So, what we have to do is learn, and the next time we reach this phase, hope­ful­ly, to go one bet­ter. In foot­ball, there are lev­els. There are lev­els in foot­ball, and the Philadel­phia Union is a mas­sive team com­pared to the De­fence Force. So some­times you just have to put your hands up and go back to the draw­ing board, and tonight was that.”

​De­spite the heavy deficit, the for­mer De­fence Force strik­er-turned coach in­tends to com­pete in the US, not­ing that "you nev­er know what can hap­pen in foot­ball."

Philadel­phia coach Bradley Car­nell praised his team, say­ing they got what they came for.

“It's been top class, and the play­ers re­al­ly had a great time here. On the field, we took care of busi­ness. Re­al­ly hap­py with the per­for­mance from the guys. And we knew go­ing in­to pre-sea­son we would have to hit the ground run­ning with good prepa­ra­tion. Prepar­ing for this game but al­so prepar­ing for our first round in the MLS on Sat­ur­day.

“So, to score five goals and to keep a clean sheet, as a coach, I couldn't ask for any­thing more. We got to cel­e­brate some de­buts, got to cel­e­brate some goal scor­ers,” Car­nell said joy­ful­ly.