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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Noreiga blames poor finishing for AC PoS woes

by

Nigel Simon
669 days ago
20230921
AC Port of Spain's Anthony Charles, left, battles for possession with Golden Lions FC's Johann Noel during the Concacaf Caribbean Cup match at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday. AC PoS suffered a 3-2 loss.

AC Port of Spain's Anthony Charles, left, battles for possession with Golden Lions FC's Johann Noel during the Concacaf Caribbean Cup match at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday. AC PoS suffered a 3-2 loss.

DANIEL PRENTICE

Walt Nor­eiga, coach of AC Port-of-Spain, has iden­ti­fied that his team's poor fin­ish­ing as the sole rea­son for their 3-2 loss to Mar­tinique's Gold­en Li­on in their Group A clash in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day night – a re­sult which has elim­i­nat­ed them from the tour­na­ment.

En­ter­ing the match with ze­ro points from their pre­vi­ous two match­es, vic­to­ry was a must for both teams to main­tain their slim chances of ad­vanc­ing to the next phase and coach Nor­eiga, blames yet an­oth­er sub-par per­for­mance in front of goal by the “Cap­i­tal Boyz” as the rea­son for be­ing at the bot­tom of the five-team group, still with­out a point af­ter three match­es.

“We con­tin­ue to have prob­lems on how to find the back of the nets. We are cre­at­ing the chances, the prob­lem is not the cre­ation of the chances, the prob­lem is in ex­e­cut­ing. I al­so think that we are mak­ing too many mis­takes and start­ing slow which leads to con­ced­ing ear­ly goals so it's some­thing that we have to look at. Our pos­ses­sion of the ball is pret­ty al­right, but I keep say­ing the ex­e­cu­tion in the fi­nal third just keeps let­ting us down all the time,” said Nor­ie­ga.

"When you look at the games, we are get­ting some clear-cut chances and it's some­thing that we just have to cor­rect and work on at the train­ing ground, get the right touch and get back that feel­ing of putting the ball in the back of the net,” lament­ed the for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al.

Gold­en Li­on moves up to third with three points with the away win, one point be­hind T&T cham­pi­ons De­fence Force, a team that has al­ready blanked them in the open­ing match. Ja­maica's Cav­a­lier FC, who whipped Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's Mo­ca FC 3-0 on Tues­day night, are cur­rent group lead­ers with sev­en points, leav­ing the DR team joint third with three points.

With the match just two min­utes old and in front of a small crowd, a de­fen­sive blun­der by the home team al­lowed Thier­ry Cather­ine to snatch the open­er for the vis­i­tors be­fore Jordy Boriel made it 2-0 in the 16th minute.

Radan­fah Abu Bakr was able to give the T&T side some hope go­ing in­to the half­time in­ter­val pulling a goal back for the "Cap­tial Boyz".

Nor­eiga tried to cap­i­talise on this mo­men­tum on re­sump­tion by mak­ing a few changes and in­tro­duc­ing Ker­ron St Cyr and Che Ben­ny, for Ka­reem East­man and An­tho­ny Charles. The switch­es seemed to breathe new life in­to the lo­cal lads as they took con­trol and cre­at­ed sev­er­al chances with yet an­oth­er of the sub­sti­tutes, Ty­rone Charles, who had re­placed an out-of-sorts, Jean-Heim Mc Fee just be­fore the break, be­ing in­stru­men­tal.

The con­stant pres­sure and the in­spi­ra­tional play of AC PoS even­tu­al­ly caused a mis­take in the Loin’s de­fence which re­sult­ed in a 2-2 score line with Samuel Mon­de­sir di­vert­ing the equal­is­ing goal past his own keep­er and in­to his net dur­ing the 68th minute.

Charles moved from po­ten­tial hero to vil­lain when in the 81st minute he wast­ed a glo­ri­ous chance to hand the host a de­serv­ing lead and with­in a few sec­onds was re­gret­ting this miss as Abu Bakr was whis­tled for a penal­ty at the oth­er end. The re­sul­tant spot kick was con­vert­ed for the win­ner in the 83rd minute, by Kevin Parse­main, Mar­tinique's all-time lead­ing scor­er.

Af­ter the match, Nor­eiga ad­mit­ted it was a bit­ter loss to cope with, say­ing: "It’s a dif­fi­cult re­sult as we were ex­pect­ing to do much bet­ter than we did tonight (Wednes­day) and I think our play in the fi­nal third let us down again, in this our third game. It is some­thing we have to look at as we con­tin­ue in the tour­na­ment and rep­re­sent as best as we could.”

Nor­eiga said it's up to him and his coach­ing staff to get the boys back in­to fo­cus and with just one match left and al­ready be­ing elim­i­nat­ed from ad­vanc­ing look fur­ther ahead.

"I think we have to im­ple­ment some of the younger boys now in­to the team, and keep push­ing, and keep work­ing. We fell off the boil in this com­pe­ti­tion but it’s not the end of AC Port-of-Spain as we will re­group and fix what needs to be fixed and come back stronger again," said Nor­ie­ga.

Look­ing at some of the good com­ing out of the game, he was pleased that even af­ter falling be­hind 2-0 ear­ly and be­ing some­what rat­tled, the team bat­tled back and played well to draw lev­el, as the op­po­si­tion was al­so giv­ing them chances.

“I knew at some point we would have come good and take some of the chances, which we did, so I was glad for that. I al­so thought we would have pushed on from the two goals we scored, but again in this tour­na­ment, like it's just not falling for us and as I said be­fore, there is work that we need to do. We have to look in the mir­ror and try to rec­ti­fy it as best and as quick­ly as pos­si­ble for when the league (T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League) restarts."

About his half­time changes, "I felt I would have got­ten more joy with the wing-backs push­ing on, and for some rea­son, the boys and they were hes­i­tant to go for­ward in the first half. So, I thought the changes I made would get the wing­backs and them to open up the pitch a lit­tle wider for the men in the mid­dle of the park, so that was the rea­son be­hind the changes."

Nor­eiga gave the op­po­nents their due say­ing: “They played well in spurts, and they did their job. They came to Trinidad, and they got the re­sult, so hats off to them that they did what they had to do."

With one match left to play against fel­low T&T club and reign­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­on De­fence Force at the same venue on Sep­tem­ber 28, Nor­eiga said his team will al­ways go in­to their match­es with pride and pas­sion.

"No mat­ter that we can’t ad­vance in the com­pe­ti­tion, we will try to fin­ish and do our best, get some of the young­sters ex­posed and try to build from this tour­na­ment," said Nor­eiga.


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