Alpha United Head Coach Wayne Dover said the perceived lack of chemistry within his squad was not the reason for his side’s two defeats and that the possibility exists that changes will be made to the team roster.
Speaking in an exclusive interview following their 4-1 loss to Portland Timbers on Tuesday night at the providence National Stadium. Dover said: “We will evaluate things and come up with a decision. There is one more week of preparation left before we depart for the away game against Olimpia. That will have to be discussed with the President and we will make a decision if necessary.”
Dover said that a lack of chemistry was not the reason for the team’s defeat.
“Chemistry doesn’t build in competitive games alone, it is built in game situations at training. Chemistry wasn’t the problem, in a few key areas the players didn’t step up. Chemistry is not the problem, poor decision making and the quality of the final ball in the final third was poor.
“These helped contribute to our dismal scoring in the two games.”
Dover says there is a lack of understanding as t5o what modern day football is all about.
“People need to try to understand modern day football and understand that football at the next level is not a sentimental thing or only using your own nationals. If you look at some of the big names, the Manchester’s, the Barcelona’s, the Bayern Munich’s, they will see multiple nationalities playing. “If they look at the Portland Timbers team, they have a roster of 30 players and 20 are foreign nationals. Even on the night, the four goals that were scored against us, all came from different nationalities outside of the USA, which were Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Argentina and Jamaica. Even our goal was scored by a Brazilian so it was night of foreigners in goal scoring,” added Dover.
According to Dover “It is not about the chemistry, it’s about a professional attitude on the pitch. In the game of football everyone makes mistakes, we are imperfect people, it’s how we deal with correcting the situation.”
Questioned about the differences in mentality between the two sides, Dover said….. “While the Portland team will work together and try to correct the situation by helping each other when mistakes are made, the players who are in the amateur environment, they tend to points fingers at each other than try to correct the mistakes.
“However, I applaud the guys for the effort given. They tried their best to get the result but at this level you cannot make those mistakes and not be punished.
We clearly saw there is no room for mistakes,” he added.
Asked about the way forward following the two losses, Dover said:“We resume training today (yesterday) and we will work to get a positive result even though it will be difficult. We will try to ensure that we won’t be defeated heavily away and still try to grind out a positive result.”
