Last Friday, we told you how the Belize National Football Team, the Jaguars, traveled from Haiti to the Dominican Republic for their next World Cup Qualifier match.
After losing their first match against Haiti last Thursday, the team left for the DR to play their second match against Turks and Caicos. Some of the players arrived last Friday, and the rest arrived on Saturday along with the coaching staff. The trip went without incident and they're all safe in the D-R.
That's where the Football Federation of Belize arranged a virtual press conference on Saturday to allow the Belizean media to ask what led to the defeat against Haiti.
Here's an excerpt of that press conference in which the Head Coach explained the game from his perspective:
Dale Pelayo Sr. - Head Coach, Belize National Team
"Going into this game with Haiti, we knew that it would have been difficult. We know what we were going up against. It's not an easy game. Haiti is ranked the best team in the Caribbean, and so, we knew exactly what we were going up against. We wanted the team to focus more on a defensive game, in which we were very disciplined defensively. We allowed 2 set pieces to score; that's football, but offensively, it took away from our game. We asked Deon to focus more a little bit
defensively, to help in the middle of the field with Jordy. Offensively, We wanted Angelo to play wide, which he did, but our game plan was to remain focused defensively for the 15-30 minutes of the game, which we did. Offensively, as I said, it took away from our game, but we wanted our offense to come through Jordy Polanco, through the midfield. It didn't happen. We had some bursts in the game where we had some advances offensively. But, that's football, but we need to focus now on our next game, which is our home game. We need to go out, and we need to be more offensive. That's the focus of the team. We need to focus more on getting the ball upfront to give us some more opportunity at goal."
"Not being able to play football for almost a year, we were at a disadvantage. You look right around in Central America. They found a way to have the sport start. We were unable to do so. Our league is not playing. Most of our are locals. When you look at the Haitian team, almost 90% of their team is from France, from Europe. They're actively playing football, so we were at a big disadvantage. It was just the last month that the Federation was able to receive the permission from the Government to train in a bubble. That's not enough at this level, at the World Cup Qualifiers. It's not enough, but despite all of that what we did in the game Thursday was significant for me to show that we have the ability. We have the players. It's just a matter of us giving our players the best opportunity to perform at the highest level."
