By Neto Baptiste
Coach of the Antigua and Barbuda Benna Boys and former national player, Mikele Leigertwood, has described the team’s 1-0 loss to the Cayman Islands on Saturday in the FIFA Men’s World Cup Qualifiers as ‘disappointing’.
During a recent chat with Observer media Leigertwood, who has since returned to the UK, said that although he was forced to make some changes ahead of the Group A clash played in the Cayman Islands, the team was still a solid one but gave it away in the dying stages for a second straight game.
“We still found ourselves with plenty of good players on the pitch and we obviously gave debuts to a couple as well which we are really proud of and really excited about and because of personnel, we had to change the formation slightly as well. So we looked at different ways we might be able to go and play against Cayman and make sure we stay quite compact. We were fairly solid for the most part but unfortunately we kind of switched off towards the end and which was really disappointing to concede another late goal,” he said.
After going scoreless for most of the fixture, Cayman Islands found the winning goal in added time when Joshwa Campbell heading in a Trey Ebanks cross at the right post. The loss came just three days after the Benna Boys were held to a 1-1 draw by Bermuda here in Antigua.
Leigertwood said the task becomes much tougher moving forward.
“The plan is to get people back into training as soon as possible. We obviously have the Nations League games coming up so the plan is to prepare for those and do really well in this competition and hopefully that will give us a bit of a boost and we looking now, in this competition in terms of the World Cup, how we go and get a result against Cuba and Honduras which we know is going to be really difficult but its a challenge we are going to tackle head-on,” the coach added.
Antigua and Barbuda Benna Boys will turn it’s attention to the CONCACAF Nations League as they will host Dominica on September 6 and Bermuda 10 days later. The team will resume it’s FIFA World Cup Qualifiers in June of 2025.
