Coaches agree on building for future

Opposing coaches in last weekend’s friendly football matches between host St Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica agreed that they are building for the future.{{more}}

The home team’s head coach, Cornelius Huggins and his Dominican counterpart, Ronnie Gustave, are both looking to 2018 World Cup qualifiers and beyond, hence their emphasis on young players.

Huggins told SEARCHLIGHT that he wants to create a new face for the senior national team.

“I want to give the team a different face look… I want to go with the younger players, create a different environment, create a different scenario as we prepare for 2018”, Huggins advanced.

He said that his new move and new look shows that no player owns a spot in the team.

Huggins noted that he wanted to get this message across to the fans and the players as well.

His opposite number, Gustave, shared similar sentiments.

“ Team Dominica, we are re-building for the next World Cup qualifiers…. As you can see, it is a lot of young players… This is the first crop of players that we have brought out for a friendly,” Gustave said.

The Dominican head coach noted that the age range of the players in the two matches played at the Sion Hill Playing Field, last Friday and Sunday, was from 16 to 26 years.

St Vincent and the Grenadines won the first match 3-2, with the second match ending 0-0.

Assessing the Vincentians’ efforts, Huggins thought that his charges, especially in Sunday’s match, should have easily disposed of the Dominicans.

“This performance was okay, but I think we could have come out with six or seven goals, because of the clear cut opportunities we had”, Huggins recalled of Sunday’s match.

In that the match, the Vincentian players were guilty of squandering several goal scoring chances and Huggins wants his charges to be “more deadly in front of goal”.

Meanwhile, Gustave in recounting the two matches said, “ I must say the friendlies were good for both teams…Overall I have to commend my team… We were just together for about three weeks, so the chemistry was not really in”.

Both teams will get another chance to pit their skills against each other in April, when Dominica hosts the Windward Islands tournament. (RT)