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Speid credits background work for Caribbean title success
December 06, 2024
Unity across Cavalier Soccer Club (CSC) has been cited as a key part of their Concacaf Caribbean Cup championship success.
Newly minted regional champions CSC returned to local soil on Thursday following their historic triumph in the competition, which was saw them defeating Dominican Republic's Cibao FC on the away goal rule.
Cavalier and Cibao had finished the tie 2-2 on aggregate, having won the first leg final 1-0 at the National Stadium through Shaquille Stein's goal, then going down 2-1 in Tuesday night's return clash in the Dominican Republic, where Dwayne Atkinson scored a crucial second-half goal.
There was no extra-time and penalty allotment.
"We have a lot of resourceful people that helped us in the background. The organisation was exceptional and everything went accordingly as planned," he stated.
As if winning the championships wasn't enough, Cavalier swept the awards. Dwayne Atkinson won the Best Player award, Shaquille Stein was the Top Goalscorer, Vino Barclett was voted as the Best Goalkeeper, Jalmaro Calvin won the Best Young Player award and the team capped it off by claiming the Fair Play award.
Speid jokingly suggested that all the awards were expected, except the Fair Play awards.
"Well, that was surprising. The rest wasn't so much as we got down to the end of the competition but it's really a good feeling as I don't believe another team has ever done that. Everyone is pleased for the hard work they've done as we were on top of our game from the start," he noted.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
Speid explained that the approach taken for the Concacaf Caribbean club championships and the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) is vastly different. He believes much more assessment goes into preparing for Caribbean games compared to the ones on home soil.
"It's two different competitions. The teams know us in the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) while those in the Caribbean don't know as much," Speid said.
"We also set up to play them differently and conduct more scouting on them. Teams in the Jamaica Premier League come to frustrate us. But we'll be ready," he added.
Cavalier, who are also defending their title in the JPL, will return to action locally on Sunday against Molynes United.
Speid believes it's time to shift their focus on the local league, which they left on a losing note following a one-nil defeat against Racing United.
"It's crucial," he said of the winning. "We're sixth in the competition and don't want anybody to say we have a game in hand. The last game in hand that we had we lost. It's crucial for us to get back to winning ways and I think we'll be ready and focused."
