Head coach of Trinidad & Tobago’s Soca Warriors, Angus Eve, has described his team as “going through a rebuilding stage” after bowing out of the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup in the USA on Sunday.

The Trinidadians secured a comfortable 4-0 win over St. Kitts and Nevis in their first game of the group stage before suffering a crushing 1-4 defeat to Jamaica then ending their campaign with a 0-6 hammering at the hands of the defending champions and hosts.

Eve, in a post-match press conference, acknowledged a gap in skill between his players and those on the teams they lost to before explaining how that gap can be closed.

“We need to have our players being exposed at the highest level and consistently play football at a high level,” he said.

“Most of the guys don’t get the exposure on the outside and consistently play at a high level, because you have to remember that our league just returned after three years. The CFU used to have competitions. You can see that St. Kitts are in the same boat as us receiving a number of goals,” he added.

Eve also criticized the fitness level of his players, noting that getting the players fit is a job for their clubs rather than the national team.

“A national team coach can’t get the players fit when they come here. They have to come from their clubs with that fitness so your job is now to put them in a formation that will get them to play well.”

“A lot of times, as you can see, we were lacking fitness,” Eve added.

Despite all this, Eve did say he sees progress in some areas, specifically in the standard of the tournament.

“The tournament is improving all the time. We were here in 2021 and we are progressing. When you look at the French-Caribbean teams, they can bring in players who are playing in France and plug those holes,” he said.