It was so close, yet so far for the T&T So­ca War­riors, miss­ing out on a place in the quar­ter­fi­nals of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League when they were held to a dra­mat­ic 2-2 tie in San­ti­a­go, Cu­ba, on Thurs­day. 

It was the first con­test in a two-match se­ries that the So­ca War­riors need­ed to claim max­i­mum points in. Still, af­ter a tow­er­ing head­er by de­fend­er Shel­don Bateau to pop them in the lead in the 8th minute, the home team seemed to have ben­e­fit­ted from tardy de­fend­ing in the fluc­tu­at­ing af­fair that earned them a share of the points. 

Na­tion­al coach Derek King, fa­mil­iar with this sit­u­a­tion, told the me­dia in the post-match press con­fer­ence that his play­ers had their chances. 

This sit­u­a­tion was du­pli­cat­ed in his team’s ear­li­er match on Sep­tem­ber 10 at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, against French Guiana, which even­tu­al­ly end­ed goal­less, a re­sult that fol­lowed a dis­as­trous 4-0 loss to Hon­duras on Sep­tem­ber 6 in Tegu­ci­gal­pa. 

“The re­sult was very dis­ap­point­ing. We had our chances, and we didn’t put them away; the first half alone could have eas­i­ly been two to three goals up, and goals win match­es,” King said. 

“We start­ed the game very well; we saw the guys will­ing to put the ball down and play, but we con­ced­ed two soft goals, and we had to make three changes as well, which kind of ham­pered us as we tried to add more at­tack­ing pow­er to the team.” 

Quizzed about his ap­proach, King said, “It was just to get the guys to be­lieve in them­selves. It was just for us to put down the foot­ball and play, and we saw that we had some very good mo­ments, as we have a very good style of play. The strik­ers were com­ing out in­to the deep pock­ets, the mid­field­ers were run­ning deep, and the wingers were go­ing in­side at least when we were in ball pos­ses­sion. De­fen­sive­ly, I think we have some work to do on our de­fen­sive as­pects.” 

With the re­sult putting the So­ca War­riors on two points from three match­es and the Cubans on three, the teams will clash a sec­ond time on Mon­day at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in a dis­play not on­ly for pride but to avoid rel­e­ga­tion to League B. The fifth and sixth-place teams will be de­mot­ed to 

King said Mon­day’s match will be cru­cial for his team. “Chances don’t win match­es; we had about two op­por­tu­ni­ties to go two goals up, and we nev­er took our chances. As I told the guys, once we keep the team in the game, they will build their con­fi­dence, and that’s what hap­pened this af­ter­noon.”

“The game on Mon­day is very im­por­tant for us; we can’t af­ford to lose the game; we’re play­ing back home. This game is some­thing we can build on, but the most im­por­tant thing is what we do now un­til the game, so we have to get the guys fo­cused and ready to play.” 

King added, “It’s im­por­tant that we mo­ti­vate the guys, but you still need to be ruth­less. When we went 2-1 up, it was a soft goal, so we have to be a bit more sol­id; we have to take that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as play­ers on the park, but I will be there cheer­ing them on.” 

The T&T team is ex­pect­ed to re­turn home last and head to To­ba­go to­day. Coach King said he will make at least two changes to the team that played on Thurs­day.