T&T National Football Men’s Senior Team
T &T men’s senior footballers Duane Muckette and Ryan Telfer reflected on their team’s humiliating 7-0 defeat by USA in a friendly match at the Exploria Stadium in Orlando, Florida, last Sunday.
Muckette said, “It was a disappointing result; it was an experience altogether but Trinidad & Tobago versus United States is always going to be a difficult game for T&T. These things happen when things are not planned the right way or prepared the right way; you are going to end up with results like this.”
Muckette who represents Memphis 901 in the USL admitted there were errors made but looks at the positives. “Everyone has to take responsibility from the administrators right down to the players. Some of the players could take some responsibility for things that happened in the game and Terry (Fenwick) must have felt that he could have done things differently. It will do us no good to point fingers or cast blame on another. Collectively, as a team we need to reflect on and learn from and try to improve moving forward. I’m very optimistic because I know the talent T&T has. The good thing about football is…there is always another game.”
The 25-year-old midfielder added, “There has been no league in Trinidad for a while now, so it is very difficult to get the national team back up and running while working around these circumstances. Nevertheless, we have to do something and get the show on the road because we have World Cup Qualifiers coming up.”
Commenting on his experience thus far under the stewardship of head coach Terry Fenwick, he said. “Every coach you play under is different, it was and will continue to be a learning experience. He has to learn from us as his players and we have to learn from him as the coach. It was an eye-opener for the players who made their debut but it has been good despite the result.”
Striker, Telfer who played the entire match said, “It’s a hard pill to swallow, going out on the field and basically getting embarrassed like that but for some guys… whether foreign or local based; getting a proper 90 minutes was very hard to get. Nothing can technically prepare you for… playing against a team that was training together for maybe six months or more, mostly guys from MLS whose season finished just a few months ago. They transitioned that into their national camp, compare that to us where we had a bunch of guys who have been training in Trinidad for almost a year combining that with foreign based players who haven’t played in a while is very tough.
The Canadian based Telfer who plies his trade with Yorke United FC concluded, “It’s all about baby steps at this point, we learn from this example and try to move forward. It is all about learning from the mistakes and working on the things we were supposed to be doing.”
