The Hindu : Sport / Football : Trinidad tastes victory finally

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 07, 2006

Sport

Sport - Football

Trinidad tastes victory finally

HAMBURG: Trinidad and Tobago finally got a win in a World Cup warm-up game — albeit against a third division German club team.

The smallest nation ever to make it to soccer's biggest stage got first-half goals from Kenwyne Jones and Jason Scotland to beat FC St. Pauli 2-1 with mostly its second-string team on Monday.

Trinidad coach Leo Beenhakker's squad goes into Saturday's opener against Sweden having drawn with Peru at home and lost in Europe to Wales, Slovenia and the Czech Republic since coming together last month. Trinidad did beat another club team, FK Austria, 3-2 last month.

``This was mainly for the players who haven't started for most of the games,'' said midfielder Chris Birchall, one of the few regulars who played. ``That's what the coach intended. Now that we got it out of the way, we can concentrate on the Sweden game.''

Trinidad and Tobago, the twin-island Caribbean country with a population of about 1.3 million people, also plays England and Paraguay in the only group that has three teams that made it to the second round of the last World Cup in 2002.

Jones created a few chances for Trinidad and converted in the 14th minute after nearly messing up a pass from Cornell Glen.

Scotland scored the second in the 28th minute, also beating goalkeeper Patrick Borger with a low shot.

Shaky 'keeper

Goalkeeper Clayton Ince was shaky on a few loose balls in the penalty box but only allowed one goal, a penalty kick by Thomas Meggle in the 53rd minute.

``It's obviously good to win a game,'' said captain Dwight Yorke, who watched on the cold night. ``It's our last game. The majority of the work is done now. The final preparations will be put in place in the next three to four days. Hopefully, we'll be ready to go.''

The game was not very intense although there was one heated moment late in the second half when Trinidad's David Atiba Charles got a red card in the 83rd minute for a hard tackle on a St. Pauli player, leading to a small scuffle in the middle of the field.

The game was played in front of a sell-out crowd of about 20,000, featuring many fans who made the long trip from Trinidad — AP

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