Despite going down to Haiti in their second match of the Concacaf U-20 Qualifiers, the Young Sugar Boyz would have learnt a lot from this experience, explains Coach Alexis Morris. The St. Kitts and Nevis U-20 team were defeated 4-0 on Sunday February 25th at the SKNFA Technical Center, but Morris had a more philosophical view on the outcome. “It’s a great experience for me…what we have gathered is that for players in St. Kits and Nevis, we can’ think that the premier league is (the highest level), if we want to further our football we have to take it outside. We go to look at the different places where we can get (professional) contracts,” Morris said. He said our players were a bit too slow on technique, which put them at a disadvantage to Haiti. This is an area that would need improvement, he said.
Nonetheless, the coach is of the view that the performance in Sunday’s match was much better than their first match against Puerto Rico. “I could attest tonight, as was evident (in the second half), that the Haitian team is not even two goals better than us. When you look at it, they got three very soft goals from mistakes that we would have made and so, again where it went wrong, I would say from the mistakes that our team made. Definitely we have to come better in protecting the ball, keeping the ball and playing our style and expressing ourselves more,” Morris said.
Meanwhile, Haitian Coach Angelo Jean Baptiste said his team has not been playing as a unit as they have not been able to train together, and he hopes this can improve. “We have so many things to fix from this game. We started two weeks ago. We don’t know all the players and they don’t have the habit of playing together so we will fix stuff. Hopefully we will have a better game against Puerto Rico,” he said.
St. Kitts and Nevis will on Tuesday at 7pm play their last match against the Cayman Islands, who drew 1-1 with Puerto Rico earlier on Sunday. The Young Sugar Boyz will be playing for pride, with the hope of finishing the competition with a win to place third in Group E.
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