Bermuda coach Michael Findlay has described the team’s display over the two legs in the Gold Cup preliminary round against Honduras as the best his side have played since his arrival.

While they lost the two-legged contest 7-3 on aggregate, the Gombey Warriors played well in the first half in both matches against their higher-ranked opponent, leading 2-0 at the interval in the home match and drawing 0-0 at the break in Tegucigalpa on Tuesday.

Despite going on to lose the second leg 2-0, Findlay was in a buoyant mood 24 hours after the match.

“That was one of the best performances I've seen from Bermuda since I started coaching this team,” Findlay told The Royal Gazette.

“It showed us that they’re maturing as a group. We were able to be flexible, we set up differently than we've been playing against other teams, and that was a display of their maturity.

“Over these two games, the players presented themselves with no excuses. They have proven that they are capable of competing and implementing a plan.

“The nice thing is that we showed flexibility, and the ability to implement different pieces of a plan. That’s a very good situation for the team overall.”

Although Findlay believes that the players were disappointed with the Honduras result, he has noticed a growing belief in the squad about the abilities the players possess.

“It was a disappointing result and the players were quite low last night,” Findlay said.

“The nice thing about this group of players is that I think they’re starting to believe. They thought it was a great opportunity to reach one of our goals, and that was to go back to the Gold Cup.

“Unfortunately, that dream ended on Tuesday and that’s going to be disappointing for everyone. But I have to say the realities also have to be taken into consideration and over the two legs our performance was something we need to applaud and build on.

“We knew it was a big ask. The match on Friday unfortunately put us in a position where we had to win by three clear goals and playing a team like Honduras, that was an incredible task.”

Despite the need to try to score goals, Bermuda were set up to defend for the first 45 minutes in order to ensure the tie did not slip away from them early in the second match.

“What we wanted to do first and foremost was to start the match in a similar way to Friday,” Findlay said.

“That was organised and compact. We tried to deny them scoring opportunities and hopefully create opportunities from the regains.

“We were also trying to possess the ball once we had won it. If we couldn't go and exploit that space, we wanted to retain it better, and I think we did that.

“But again, we didn’t create enough to put ourselves in a good position, and that’s always going to be the end result. If you’re not able to score goals, you’re not going to win football matches, but again we felt strongly that we had to build on the plan that we had put in place on Friday.

“It could be easily said by many people that we should have gone out guns blazing but we had to realise who the opponent is, and we also want to make sure that we build on what we’re doing here.”

Captain Dale Eve, who made two quality saves on Tuesday, expressed his pride in the team’s effort over the two legs.

“I think we can all agree that the timing we have together and the fact that we’re constantly adding new players into important roles will always give us a huge mountain to climb,’’ Eve said.

“However, I feel we rode the wave accordingly. Obviously we’re expected to apply pressure and beat every opposition, but the reality is that we’re an underdog nation in the region.

“We need to find a way to get together more often, work on specifics within our style of play and gain more experience as a team. I cannot say enough how proud I was of the new boys for their efforts coming up against a heavy hitter like Honduras.

“Maybe we can do better tactically as a nation, but in regards to giving the shirt their all, every single player bled red, blue, white and pink once they stepped over the line. I couldn’t be more proud of every single person in our team.”

With two crucial 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifying matches against Cayman Islands and Cuba coming up in June, Findlay is optimistic that the players can replicate the same displays in those fixtures.

“We have to use these kinds of performances to stake a claim as we move forward,” the coach added.

“We have shown that we can compete with teams in the upper half of Concacaf and we have to use this as a motivating factor for our games in June.”