Se­nior men’s na­tion­al team as­sis­tant coach, Rus­sell Lat­apy, ad­mits he is "sat­is­fied but not hap­py" with the team's progress since the ar­rival of head coach Dwight Yorke and his staff last year.

Lat­apy, fa­mous­ly dubbed "The Lit­tle Ma­gi­cian" for his ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent, gave his first de­tailed ac­count of his role, stress­ing that the progress they are see­ing has been part of a process that they haven’t had much time to work on.

The T&T team is cur­rent­ly deep in the fi­nal, cru­cial round of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers, need­ing noth­ing less than six points from their next two match­es against re­gion­al ri­val Ja­maica to­mor­row night at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain and Bermu­da on Tues­day at the same venue, to have a re­al­is­tic, yet her­culean chance of au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cup, which will be host­ed joint­ly by Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the Unit­ed States.

He said, “I think when Dwight first got the job and in­vit­ed me to work with him, the ob­jec­tive was pret­ty clear. Num­ber one, re­al­ly, was qual­i­fy­ing for the up­com­ing World Cup, and two was bring­ing sta­bil­i­ty back to our foot­ball. I think along that process, what has been achieved is that we've been able to at­tract a lot of new faces to the na­tion­al team, first­ly. And then, sec­ond­ly, I think we've al­so es­tab­lished a play­ing style—the way that Dwight wants to play—which I think suits our play­ers bet­ter in terms of achiev­ing re­sults.

“So, I think we're still a long way from where we want­ed to be, from where we fore­saw where we should have been, in terms of points, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in terms of per­for­mances. But these two games com­ing up are so im­por­tant for us. We get two re­sults in these two games, then it keeps our dream alive. I think what has hap­pened with qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup, it gave the play­ers a big­ger and bet­ter be­lief in the process and the phi­los­o­phy and the way we want­ed to play. You know, again, the re­sults didn't go ex­act­ly how we want­ed.

"In the World Cup, we've changed so many play­ers, so many play­ers. I think rough­ly some­where be­tween 50 and 60 play­ers so far have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty un­der Dwight to rep­re­sent Trinidad. And we've had some play­ers with amaz­ing po­ten­tial. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some­times it is in­juries, it is form at present, but I would think al­to­geth­er, I think we are gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied. I don't know if I would use the word hap­py but sat­is­fied with the steady progress the team is mak­ing, has been mak­ing. Again, long may it con­tin­ue.”

​With five points from four match­es to date, "Latas" is call­ing on play­ers to con­vert their chances and de­fend prop­er­ly in the com­ing match­es, say­ing this is where their down­falls lie.

“I want to touch on the four games we've played so far. We've had one de­feat and two draws. In my opin­ion, I would say that I think we were the bet­ter team, and the stats show that we had the ad­van­tage in terms of chances and pos­ses­sion. In the two games against Cu­ra­cao, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we didn't put the ball in the back of the net enough times to win these games," said Lat­apy.

“I think the key to this game re­al­ly would be be­ing sol­id at the back and tak­ing our chances. And I want to men­tion to our fans as well, you know, their sup­port is vi­tal. We need that 12th man to be mo­ti­vat­ing the play­ers, and I think if we can have that, then it gives the play­ers that ex­tra mile they can go.”