Cayman’s 4-year winless streak under the microscope

The Cayman Islands national men’s football team continues to fall short, even in games they are expected to win.

The men’s team hasn’t recorded a single victory out of the 11 matches they have played since 2019, with their latest performances in the 2023-24 CONCACAF Nations League not leaving any room for optimism.

Cayman kicked off gameplay in Group B of League C, against the US Virgin Islands on Thursday, 7 Sept., at which they notched their first point with a 2-all draw. Four days later, a rowdy home crowd welcomed Aruba to the Truman Bodden Sports Complex, where Cayman lost 1-2.

Following that defeat on Monday, 11 Sept., head coach Cláudio Garcia said his team failed to secure favourable results due to minor mistakes.

“We started in a good way,” Garcia said at the post-match press conference. “At the end, small, small mistakes [were] keeping us from taking a step forward. We were not aggressive enough… and we will work on that.”

Garcia went on to say that the team’s “mentality is always to win”, noting that will be the objective heading into their remaining matches of the Nations League.

However, wanting to win has not yet translated into actual victories, and the question remains why.

Is it the coaching?

Cayman has gone 11 straight matches without a win. The last time they recorded a victory was when Benjamin Pugh led the squad.

Pugh was behind the team’s most notable performances in the 2019 Nations League when the Cayman men narrowly missed a promotion on goal differential. He resigned from the Cayman Islands Football Association in 2021 following the World Cup Qualifiers, but did not offer a reason for that decision.

Alexander Gonzalez then served as the interim men’s coach but he too was unable to secure any wins for the Cayman men – with many players noting to the Compass during his time at the helm that they couldn’t understand him because English was his second language.

On the women’s side, Dion La Foucade was released last month as the national team’s head coach because CIFA wasn’t pleased with his performance after the squad dropped every game in a three-fixture series with the University of West Florida.

On La Foucade’s release, CIFA president Alfredo Whittaker said in an interview that he was not satisfied with the women’s national team’s preparation for the CONCACAF Gold Cup coming up later this month.

“I don’t believe in talking, I believe in action,” Whittaker said at the time.

Yet, Garcia has gone winless in three matches as Cayman’s men’s coach – and in matches the squad was favoured on paper to win.

However, according to Whittaker, it is not the sole duty of the national coach to produce favourable results when Cayman is competing internationally.

He said during the interview last month that players should be match-ready prior to national preparation, ultimately putting the responsibility on club coaches to get players fit.

The season for clubs ended several months ago, however, so it is unclear how domestic players could be blamed for the national team’s poor results if clubs are in the off-season.

Is it the players?

For the recent Nations League games, Cayman was missing many key players who are currently overseas, including Cory Smith, Gunnar Studenhofft, Jacobbi Tugman, Leighton Thomas Jr., Mason Duval, Mark Ebanks, Syrus Connolly and Shakur Silburn.

Following the match against Aruba, Garcia said that his priority is the team on hand, not those players who were missing.

“The players that we don’t have here, they are not important for now,” he said. “Sometimes we try to have the best players here, but for one reason or another that’s not possible.”

Whittaker admitted that some of the players who would give Cayman the best chance of winning at the international level are absent from the squad due to their overseas clubs not releasing them for those games.

However, several players who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being backlisted from the national squad, said they were not comfortable with how things are being handled by CIFA executives and opted to stay away temporarily.

Whittaker said that only a handful of players are opposed to the current structure of his association.

“I know it’s four players,” he said. “… [B]ut you have a responsibility for your country. There is always a group that will point fingers towards CIFA.”

Moving forward, the men’s national team will be hoping for better results in their next two fixtures in the Nations League, beginning with a rematch against USVI at home on 17 Oct.

Though tensions remain between CIFA executives and players, Garcia is still hopeful that his team will break through with their first big win in almost four years.

Meanwhile, the national women’s team, under acting coach Michael Johnson, will begin their CONCACAF W Gold Cup campaign with an away game against Anguilla on 21 Sept.