Bermuda face the Herculean task of overturning a two-goal deficit in the second leg of the Concacaf Gold Cup preliminary round play-off in Honduras tonight.

After coming close to pulling off a huge upset against a team ranked nearly 100 places above them in the Fifa world rankings on Friday night, the squad travelled to Honduras on Sunday with fresh belief ahead of the second leg, to be played at 11pm Bermuda time.

Despite a 5-3 defeat in an extraordinary game at Flora Duffy Stadium, coach Michael Findlay was content with his side’s display but knows more will be needed if they are to come close to turning the tie around.

“We said from the start that this was about us and our performance levels. We need to put in a performance,” he said.

“Yes, we wanted to win, that’s why we play football, but we had to be realistic as to who our opponent was and what the situation was. We can 100 per cent look at ourselves and know that we put a performance in and we can build from that.”

Findlay’s more defensive strategy worked a treat for an hour in the first leg as Bermuda took a two-goal lead but he knows that his side will need to be more expansive in the away leg.

“Going into Tegucigalpa, what has to happen is that we have to be on the front foot,” Findlay said.

“If we scored three goals against them in Bermuda, there is no reason to say that we can’t score three goals against them in Tegucigalpa.

“We’ll be playing in an empty stadium as they are under a suspension due to an incident in the previous round so that changes the atmosphere a little.

“Let’s be honest, I know the coach quite well and he was very concerned in that first leg, so he is just going to make sure those guys don’t go to sleep and think that they have got the job already done.

“But we need to look at it as a positive. There are not too many times that you get to go to Honduras to play against top players in these types of games.

“I keep harping on about that because that is really important. No matter what the result is on Tuesday, win, lose, qualify or not qualify, it’s going to bode really well for our next matches in June.

It must have been tempting for Findlay to try to park the bus when he was leading 2-0 at half time with many spectators during the interval hoping to see the introduction of a second defensive midfielder.

“They changed at half-time and we tried to match-up,” Findlay said.

“What we didn’t deal with is that they retain the ball and in one or two passes they will strip it to the other side but also have a second man running off that pass.

“We really didn’t think we needed to change anything because one of the things we were concerned about was getting stretched because they are quick, particularly their two wide players.

“We wanted to lay a little low and not try to park the bus in the second half.

“We wanted to get higher but we didn’t want to get into chasing because you can see what happens with this type of team. Come Tuesday it could be a different situation.”

Findlay deployed experienced midfielders Roger Lee and Reggie Lambe deep into the second half against Honduras, while forward Enrique Russell ran himself into the ground as a lone striker on a heavy pitch. With tired legs very much a factor, Findlay knows that he may need to rotate his starting XI.

“You probably saw by our substitution choices on Friday that we started to roll them and I thought our subs were impactful,” he said.

“Everybody in the stands understands that we were trying to balance an experienced group of players because we needed that. It showed and they were trying to keep people calm and not chase and do those things when you are playing in a strategic initiative. You need that experience and that’s why they were there.

“Will their legs be able to continue? We’ll see. We’ll get the medical staff to look at it and we have a really strong regeneration programme that we do and it’s showing us benefits down the road.

“It’s going to be tough and some of the selections could be exciting as it might be the first time for some of the guys to be in that situation.

“Sometimes youth too has a tendency to do things that are unpredictable. Whereas an experienced player does the expected thing, youth doesn’t, so you never know.”