Grenada coach gutted

Audley Boyd, Assistant Editor - Sport

CARSON, California:

WHAT a difference a day makes.

With heads hung, barely raised to see yards ahead of their toe, Grenada's senior footballers marched out of the Home Depot Centre on Monday night, obviously not wanting to be seen and devastated by what had transpired over the 90-odd minutes on the field.

They had just received a 4-0 walloping in their opening CONCACAF Gold Cup fixture against Jamaica, the team they had faced in their last tournament fixture - the Digicel Caribbean Cup semi-finals in Martinique last December.

Only then, they were in a much better mood, disappointed yes at losing, but more encouraged because the 2-1 margin conceded to a better opponent was respectable.

If only for the margin on Monday night, you could've understood the Grenadians' grief. But the manner in which they were pulled apart, ridiculed and dislocated in a totally one-sided battle added insult to injury.

" I'm very disappointed with our performance because we had a game plan and from the off we didn't stick to it," said Grenada's coach, Michael Adams. "We talked about denying the Jamaicans space and time on the ball and in fact, from the outset we gave them time.

"We surrendered and let them come at us and a team with that type of patience and discipline that they play with can hurt us," he remarked. "We should have played closer to them, we should have played higher up the park.

"It's a horrible result.

"We had our backs against the wall before we came in here and they're even more against the wall now," Adams argued. "What we'll have to do is regroup, re-find that confidence and we tactically have to change. What we did today just did not work ... we'll just have to hope that we can come back and steal a result."

No chance

His team never created a decent scoring chance against Jamaica. They took two kicks at the goal from distance, yet conceded a ton-load of chances while being 'balled' off the park.

At one stage, they could not keep the ball for a second, it appeared, having been made to chase leather while Jamaica ran rings around them and significantly improved their play to an extremely dangerous goal-creation level in the last 20 minutes.

Commenting on their porosity then, Adams said: "I think that what happened is that we got moved around so much that in the end the team just got fatigued and what happens when a team gets tired is that they make poorer decisions. I think at 3-0 down, our confidence went and it showed; and Jamaica's confidence rose and in the end that told."