NEWS

'Twas not a good performance!

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

SAN DIEGO, California — It is often said that results are what matters most in tournaments and not necessarily performance.

Well, head coach of the Reggae Boyz Theodore Whitmore is pleased with the result of Sunday's opening 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group C 2-0 victory over Curacao inside the Qualcomm Stadium here, but he's by no means a happy bunny as regards the team's performance.

“Well, I think it wasn't a good performance,” was Whitmore's frank admission when he spoke to the Jamaica Observer shortly before the team's departure from the hotel to the airport yesterday.

“We knew our plan coming into this tournament and we wanted to get the first game out of the way... so I'm pleased with the result, but the performance wasn't a hundred per cent, as we thought we were a bit too slow in moving around the ball. The connection between the midfield and the strikers wasn't there and we failed to turn around the Curacao defenders, and in the second half, you would have noticed the two goals came from having the Curacao defenders chasing...

“Our transition was a bit slow as well and we tended to want to keep the football, but in the wrong areas of the pitch. But it was a good start, three points, and pleased with the result,” he assessed.

The Reggae Boyz got off to a decent start, bossing the game with free movement of the ball for the first 20 minutes before everything went south from there, as they appeared pedestrian in attack and at times void of any strategy. This led to a number of possiblè counter-attacks going to waste.

However, on the resumption, Whitmore adjusted Je-vaughn Watson's role in midfield in order to provide more fluidity in transition, and it wasn't long before Romario Williams opened the scoring in the 58th minute when he latched onto a neat through pass from Watson to blast the ball past Eloy Room at his near post. A quarter hour later sub Darren Mattocks wrapped up the points when he volleyed home a left-footed bomber after neat interplay from Jermaine Taylor, Lamar Lawrence and Oneil Fisher.

From then onwards it was just for the Boyz to keep their defence solid.

“I was pleased with the back four; I thought they kept the shape and they were solid, but the areas I wasn't pleased with were in the middle of the park and going forward.”

The coach was also pleased with the impact of Mattocks, who was a late scratch from the starting eleven along with Cory Burke. Both were withdrawn after turning up late at pre-game team meeting at the hotel.

“Mattocks is a runner and once he's going this is one of the pluses for us because we get to turn the Curacao defenders... We were playing too much to feet and in front, so they had nothing to do for the first 45 minutes. So when he (Mattocks) came on he was running into space and we created more chances in the second half,” explained the former Reggae Boyz star player.

He was also pleased with the defensive aspects of the wide players, but thought they never really impacted the attack as they should have.

“Defensively they (Fisher and Owayne Gordon) played well, but the pace we have on the wing we should be exploiting more in attack, but every time we get the ball we tend tò play it inside or go back to our centre halves, or the goalkeeper. And we wanted to get the ball up front to run at people, so I didn't think in attack they were that effective,” noted the coach.

But with Curacao now in the past and Mexico ahead on Thursday, the coach is promising changes.

“We have 23 players and we have to approach each game differently, so we have to make some adjustments — not only because we won against Curacao, but because we intend to play the Mexicans a certain way, and that will require certain personnel changes, so definitely some changes will be made,” he confirmed.

“We know one of the areas we are going to focus on is crosses because they (Mexico) tend to play a lot of wide balls and hit them in the box, so those are areas we nèed to concentrate on,” he ended.