Nahki Wells admitted that he was far from his best — even after the Bermuda captain scored twice on a rare opportunity to play in front of a home crowd.

The Huddersfield Town forward, whose late goals in Bermuda’s 3-0 victory over Bahamas came after he missed four clear opportunities, including a penalty, said that frustration had been mounting before the breakthrough goal arrived 11 minutes from time.

“Anyone could see that many of us weren’t at our best today and I will hold up my hands and say I was one of those,” Wells said.

“It was frustrating, and when you don’t take chances, negativity starts to creep in.

“But once we unlocked the defence and got one goal, then we got two more quickly and everyone went home happy.”

Wells praised his young team-mates, including Zeiko Lewis, Danté Leverock and Jalen Harvey, who all “played better than us professionals”, he said.

Bermuda’s next World Cup qualifying hurdle is Guatemala in June. “We will go into that game as underdogs and all the pressure will be on them,” Wells said.

“As long as we prepare the squad well, do our best and have our twelfth man [the home crowd], then there’s no reason we can’t do it.”

Andrew Bascome, the Bermuda coach, was happy to see his players stick to their passing game, even when a goal looked unlikely.

“I respect the tactics of the Bahamas team — they had two banks of four and were very disciplined,” Bascome said. “I told the players we must keep believing in our philosophy and get the result.

“The minute you start questioning your philosophy, that’s when things can go wrong.”

Bascome believes that Bermuda will need to step up their game for tougher opponents in the next round of qualifying.

“We need to press Guatemala and get up on them early because if we sit back, then they’ll pull us apart,” he said.

“We’ll need to increase our fitness and improve our technical ability and we need to stay organised for longer periods.”

Bascome was delighted by the support at National Stadium from a crowd of more than 2,000. “It goes to show that we do love football in Bermuda,” he said.

Dion Godet, the Bahamas coach, said: “We wanted to come out and put up a fight, and the team did that. We had a few mental breakdowns and Bermuda were able to take advantage of that.

“I noticed in the first leg Andrew [Bascome] employed the ‘Brazilian Box’ midfield. We studied that, we prepared for that and sought to shut off the No 8 [Drewonde Bascome], who was their trigger.”

Dwayne Whylly, the captain and goalkeeper for Bahamas, said that his side had played valiantly. “Our game plan was to stay compact defensively and to be free-flowing going forward,” he said.

“We played well for 79 minutes — the first goal came from a mistake and that was that.”