CLEVELAND, Ohio, CMC – Head coach Dennis Lawrence has called for a change of mentality in the Trinidad and Tobago side following their heavy 6-0 drubbing at the hands of giants United States last weekend.
They trailed just 1-0 at the half-time break but capitulated in the second to concede five goals in their Group D encounter of the CONCACAF Gold Cup at FirstEnergy Stadium.
“How can you be so good for 65 minutes and so awful for the last 25 minutes, which is a bit of a surprise,” a stony-faced Lawrence complained.
“But that’s our mentality, we have to change the mentality and we have to learn to stand up and fight. So 65 minutes [of good football] but not good enough.”
He continued: “I thought we lost concentration, we started to go gung-ho to see if we could get back into the game. That’s not the way we do things. You have to stay organised and believe that what you were doing, which was working, is going to get you back into the game and we just lost all focus.
“People started to go gung-ho, leave runners and in the end we paid the price.”
T&T were solid in the first half and had a couple of chances to take the lead but spurned them. The misses chances came back to haunt the Caribbean side with half-time approaching when Aaron Long scored in the 41st to put the USA in front.
In the second half, Trinidad held their own inside the first 20 minutes, Levi Garcia shooting over after finding himself in an excellent position to equalise.
Yet again, T&T paid dearly as the USA then scored five goals in a devastating 24-minute period to run out easy winners.
“At half-time I said to the boys ‘we’re right in this’ because that’s the way I felt in the first half,” Lawrence pointed out.
“We showed good energy, good enthusiasm, I thought we were well organised, we kept some of their key players off danger positions – we didn’t allow (Michael) Bradley to get on the ball, we didn’t allow Christian (Pulisic) to get into good spaces and we did our job.
“So at half-time I was very confident that we had a chance in the game. Like I said before, up until the 65th minute, everything was going fine and then we just totally collapsed, lost concentration and that’s our mentality we have to change.”
The defeat was T&T’s second following their opening loss to Panama last Tuesday in St Paul’s, Minnesota.
Already eliminated and with one match remaining against fellow Caribbean Football Union side, Guyana, Lawrence assured there would be changes for the encounter in Kansas City on Wednesday.
“I think when you lose a game in that manner you have to expect changes, so there’s definitely going to be changes,” he stressed.
“We need to now start thinking forward and put this behind our backs as quickly as possible.”
