MONTEGO BAY, St James — Theodore Whitmore, coach of the national senior men’s team, said despite a historic 0-0 draw against CONCACAF kingpins Mexico at the Azteca Stadium in their World Cup final round qualifying game on Wednesday night, Jamaica could have won the game.

Upon his arrival yesterday along with goalkeeper coach Warren Barrett at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Whitmore said they had prepared properly for the game and knew what to expect from Mexico.

“We watched tapes of the last few games played by Mexico and I selected a team to go down to Mexico and perform and it was no surprise last night (Wednesday),” Whitmore told reporters.

While saying he never felt any pressure from external forces over the squad of players he selected, Whitmore said. “We know what the Mexicans have to offer as I said we have studied them over the past few games and the only thing they have changed are names, they play the same system,” he said.

“All we did was block out the wings and try to force them down the middle…and if you saw the game you saw where they constantly wanted to go down the wings and square (the ball), but we had adequate defenders like (Adrian) Mariappa, (Nyron) Nosworthy, Demar Phillips and Jermaine Taylor there to deal with that.”

The confidence displayed by the players, including a handful of UK-raised newcomers, had a lot to do with the result, Whitmore said.”There was a lot of confidence going into the game and we knew that we could get something out of this game, we knew we could beat this team, everyone was talking about the altitude and all that, it’s just a mind game…football speaks one language,” Whitmore said.

Goalkeeper and captain Donovan Ricketts, who was returning to the team for the first time in months, had an outstanding game, blocking several chances by the Mexican players and both Whitmore and Barrett had high praises for the shot-stopper.

“Ricketts has a job to do and that’s what he went out there to do, we have never questioned his performance or commitment to the national team,” Whitmore pointed out.

Barrett described Ricketts’ performance as “excellent”, and said he had a long chat with the USA-based custodian in December. “We know he is still the best goalkeeper we have currently and I was not surprised by his and the team’s performance,” the former national goalkeeper told the Jamaica Observer.

The rest of the contingent was due to arrive in Kingston last night.