Though high in praise for Tues­day’s im­pres­sive 4-0 win for the So­ca War­riors over Cu­ba in a Con­ca­caf Gold Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er Brent San­cho be­lieves cru­cial changes are need­ed in the de­part­ments of mid­field and de­fence for the coun­try to qual­i­fy for the FI­FA World Cup.

Dwight Yorke’s So­ca War­riors gave an im­pres­sive dis­play, which left thou­sands of fans who made their way to the Bal­main, Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty, in­clu­sive of for­mer and present Prime Min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young, more than sat­is­fied.

How­ev­er, de­spite a per­for­mance that left even him all smiles, San­cho be­lieves Yorke’s charges have some tweak­ing to do.

“And I’m not just talk­ing about play­ing against teams like Cu­ba or St Kitts/Nevis or Grena­da, but the big teams in the Con­ca­caf re­gion if we are to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, and it’s not much,” San­cho said.

San­cho has been a steady de­fend­er for the T&T team from youth to se­nior lev­els. Still, he was shut out from world fame when lanky Eng­land strik­er Pe­ter Crouch climbed high on his back and pulled his hair in a 2006 FI­FA World Cup match be­tween the teams in a Group B en­counter, which the Eng­lish won 2-0.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day, San­cho said, “It was a good re­sult; there’s no doubt about that. In terms of re­sults, it is what Dwight Yorke would have want­ed as a head coach: a win and an em­phat­ic win at home too. We speak about be­ing ag­gres­sive in terms of the way they want­ed to play, and the red card would have as­sist­ed in that, but all in all, it was a good re­sult and a good per­for­mance.

“Cer­tain­ly, there is enough to build on mov­ing for­ward, and I don’t think that was ever the prob­lem, but when you’re talk­ing about World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion, you need to have ful­ly func­tion­ing de­part­ments, and I do feel that we still have some leaks in some ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the mid­field and the de­fence,” San­cho ex­plained.

He ex­plained, though, “I don’t think it’s nec­es­sary for the play­ers; I think it’s prob­a­bly the need for the ad­di­tion of one or two play­ers who can do those par­tic­u­lar roles. I don’t think the play­ers we have there have the skill sets to go to that lev­el, so I think those two de­part­ments are ar­eas he would look at to im­prove,” San­cho told Guardian Me­dia Sports.

In the team’s open­ing match of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup Qual­i­fiers in San­ti­a­go, Cu­ba, the home team took the ad­van­tage af­ter just five min­utes, cour­tesy of a de­fen­sive blun­der that al­lowed Yas­nier Matos to fire the Cubans ahead.

In the sec­ond game of a two-match in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly se­ries against Ja­maica in Feb­ru­ary, the So­ca War­riors were lead­ing against the Ja­maicans from a Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham item un­til a de­fen­sive blun­der saw Trim­ming­ham ac­ci­den­tal­ly put the ball in­to his net to en­sure they got away with a tie, 1-1.

San­cho, asked what ar­eas he be­lieves Yorke can take away mov­ing for­ward, said, “In terms of the pos­i­tives in the match, I think young Tyrese Spicer in par­tic­u­lar is do­ing so well in on­ly his sec­ond game in the red, white and black of T&T. So, we have a lot of promise there, cer­tain­ly a lot of promise with Dan­taye Gilbert, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you look at his age and his ma­tu­ri­ty. And we have seen a bet­ter ver­sion of Daniel Phillips in the mid­dle of the park, so those are some of the pos­i­tives.”

Yorke’s War­riors will next com­pete in the Uni­ty Cup, which fea­tures four na­tions—T&T, Nige­ria, Ghana and Ja­maica—fac­ing off in Lon­don, Eng­land, in May.

Af­ter that, they will take on St Kitts/Nevis at the World Cup Qual­i­fiers on June 6 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, be­fore tak­ing on Cos­ta Ri­ca away on June 10.