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| June 17, 2006 | Saturday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 20, 1427 |
Trinidadians enjoy cricket after England loss
ROTENBURG, June 16: As soon as practice ended on Friday, Stern John broke out the cricket bat and began a light-hearted game with his Trinidad and Tobago team-mates.Shouts and laughter rang out as bowlers threw tennis balls to the batters. Not quite the scene one would expect the day after a heartbreaking World Cup loss to England.
Then again, few experts expected the Soca Warriors to still have a chance to make it to the second round of the World Cup heading into their final first-round game.
“They called us in the beginning the Cinderella team and we had nothing to look for in this tournament,” coach Leo Beenhakker said on Friday. “You see how the team managed to play against two big European teams. They can be proud of themselves.”
Trinidad and Tobago were less than 10 minutes away from their second straight 0-0 draw on Thursday before England’s Peter Crouch scored on a header in the 83rd minute. Steven Gerrard added another goal in injury time and Trinidad and Tobago fell 2-0.
“Coming into the World Cup everyone thought that we'd be the whipping boys and lose every game heavily,” midfielder Chris Birchall said. “We’ve done the country proud.''
The Soca Warriors have one point in Group B from the draw in the opener against Sweden. They need to beat Paraguay on Tuesday and hope England beat Sweden to finish in a tie for second place with the Swedes with four points. Then it would go to goal differential to see who advanced to the second round.
“That's what we talked about this morning after cleaning out some disappointment. It is still not over,” Beenhakker said. “We know what we have to do. The first thing we have to do is beat Paraguay. We will do everything we can to do that and go for it.
“Hopefully we will have a situation where England will do its duty and beat Sweden. We don't have it in our own hands but the things we do have in our hands we will try to do.”
Trinidad and Tobago have shown the ability to play tight defence in theit first two games – getting strong goalkeeping from Shaka Hislop, marking the opposition’s best scoring threats, and even capitalising on some breaks when the opponents missed the target.
But Beenhakker's team has not been able to create many chances of its own.
Trinidad has only 13 shots and five on target in the first two games. Cornell Glen hit the crossbar for the best chance against Sweden, and John's header was cleared off the line by England defender John Terry in the second game.
If Trinidad and Tobago is going to have any chance to advance, it needs to score against Paraguay.
“You just have to have patience and use the 90 minutes to try to do something nice in front,” Beenhakker said. “We had some opportunities, but you have to be a little bit lucky of course.”—AP
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