“We’ll do our best”

Asked the legendary Franz Beckenbauer, one of only two men to have won the World Cup as a player and as a manager,: “You’re going to beat England right?”

Replied Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago: “We’ll do our best.”

Yes indeed. The Warriors’ are tenacious, committed, passionate bunch riding on the crest of an enormous wave of support. Will this be enough to overcome that, in the opinion of many (but here expressed by Markus Jestaedt, a World Cup media adviser in Beckenbauer’s party), “the team itself is not that strong.” Jestaedt opined, moreover, that “[the team] was too old and too inexperienced on the international stage.”

I disagree with that latter statement. Some of the key players on the team might be ’senior’: Yorke will be a spry 35 in March; goalie Shaka Hislop is celebrating his 37th birthday tomorrow; Dennis Lawrence is 32. You wouldn’t, however, dare to describe any of those players as inexperienced. On the other hand, what players like Kevin Neaves and Anthony Noreiga (and potentially, Anthony Warner) lack in international experience they compensate for in youth, energy and versatility. I agree that this is not the strongest team we’ve ever fielded, but it would be an underestimation of the will and the potential of the Warriors to dismiss them outright.