Soca Warriors Wake up call before World Cup Opener

Trinidad & Tobago was dominated by the Czech Republic at the Toyota Arena in their final warm-up match before the start of the World Cup finals on Saturday evening. The soca warriors seem to have no answer to Czech striker Jan Koller and that cannot be good news for Warriors supporters.  The warriors should have paid special attention to Koller when after only two minutes in the game Marvin Andrews had to clear his lob over goalkeeper Kevin Jack off the goal line.  In the six minute Koller finally open the scoring with a powerful diving header from a cross from midfielder Karel Poborsky that seemed to catch the entire warrior defense and Kevin Jack off guard.  Stern John provided a spark for the warrior’s offense but his shot straight to goalkeeper Peter Cech.       To add insult to injury Koller again was allowed to set up his captain Pavel Nedved to give his team a 2-0 lead.

Counter attacks still seem to be a concern for coach Beenhakker and his defense because the Czech third goal was created from a counter-attack that resulted in (who else) Jan Koller scoring his second of the game and the third for the Czech Republic's five minutes before the half. The Czech kept the pressure on T&T and were it not for some brilliant save by the Warriors goalkeeper Kevin Jack, the score could have been more lopsided at the half

The warriors were fortunate that Czech coach Karel Bruckner made a halftime change and three changes at the fifteen minute mark into the second half that broke their team chemistry. The Czechs still had the game under control, and managed to create several more scoring opportunities.

In the last three game of their European tour Trinidad and Tobago have zero wins and three losses and it is possible that there would be a lot of second guessers interested in the reasons why warriors coach Beenhakker preference was to have the team preparing in Europe at that time versus being in Trinidad and Tobago from May 7 to 13, 2006 for farewell Celebration.

Line-Ups:

Trinidad & Tobago:

Kelvin Jack, Avery John (Atiba Charles, 46), Marvin Andrews, Dennis Lawrence, Chris Birchall (Aurtis Whitley, 46), Cyd Gray, Carlos Edwards (Kenwyne Jones, 69), Collin Samuel, Stern John, Densill Theobald (Anthony Wolfe, 77), Dwight Yorke (capt).

Czech Republic:

Petr Cech, Zdenek Grygera, David Rozehnal, Tomas Ujfalusi, Marek Jankulovski (Pavel Mares, 79), Karel Poborsky (Jiri Stajner, 61), Jan Polak (Marek Heinz, 61), Jaroslav Plasil, Pavel Nedved (Martin Jiranek, 82), Milan Baros (Libor Sionko, 46), Jan Koller (Vratislav Lokvenc, 61).