Despite the Cayman Islands national women’s football team being the highest ranked in Group D of League C of the Road to W Gold Cup, they have yet to secure a victory in the 2023-24 CONCACAF tournament.
In their most recent game, the Cayman women, sitting at 166 on the FIFA table, dropped three points to 178th-ranked Curaçao. The visiting team bested Cayman 2-0 at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex on Thursday, 26 Oct.
However, Cayman women’s head coach Michael Johnson believes his team performed better than at previous fixtures, even though they lost.
“Personally, I won’t really speak about what went wrong,” Johnson said after the match. “Overall, from the Anguilla game, I think we have… stepped up a level.”
Prior to losing to Curaçao, Cayman drew 2-2 against 183rd-ranked Anguilla on 25 Sept., which followed a 3-1 loss to Anguilla on 21 Sept. – making Cayman ineligible to move on to the next stage of the tournament.
According to Johnson, the recent results were due to the youth of the squad.
“We had more debuts again,” he said. “I keep stressing, it’s a very young team… I feel like we are going in the right direction.”
And while he did say results always matter, Johnson suggested that he and the Cayman Islands Football Association have accepted they will lose games because of the inexperienced players on the squad.
“I don’t want to shoot down results because this is the senior level, but again, we also have to be realistic and recognise that this is a process that myself and [CIFA] are happy to go along with,” he said, noting that the age of the team has really affected the level of performance.
Long-time senior player Neesah Godet shared her coach’s sentiments, while remaining positive, though disappointed by the latest defeat.
“Personally, I feel like we played an excellent game,” she said. “I feel like we deserved the win and that’s why I feel a little disappointed. As coach said, we increased to another level and I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I think we played a really great game today.”
Cayman will play away against Curaçao in their final fixture of the CONCACAF Road to W Gold Cup on 4 Dec.
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