COMPLACENCY could be the key word as Kenny Thompson's troops begin their World Cup campaign at the National Sports Centre this weekend.

Having earlier this month lost only 1-0 and drawn 2-2 with Trinidad and Tobago - one of the strongest teams in the Caribbean - they have little or nothing to fear against the whipping boys of world football, Montserrat.

Those in the volcano-devastated island which neighbours Antigua have over recent years had a lot more on their minds than football.

And it shows.

Their national team are rock bottom in the FIFA world rankings and they occupy a similar position on the CONCACAF chart.

Confidence is so low that even their assistant coach admitted earlier this week they were reluctant to play any warm-up games ahead of this Sunday's clash for fear of lowering morale even further.

In their own minds, they're flying to Bermuda on a wing and a prayer. The players themselves don't believe they have much of a chance - even against a team such as Bermuda who, despite those recent results against Trinidad, have hardly set the international stage alight.

Yet therein might lie Thompson's biggest problem. His opponents have everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose.

They can play without feeling pressure and without the burden of expectation.

That pressure's firmly on the home side and that's why Bermuda's players will need to treat Sunday's match even more seriously than they did the outings against Trinidad.

The burden of expectation is theirs. We're expected to win and win well.

And with away goals counting double in the event of a tie on aggregate, the necessity to play attacking football has to be tempered by the need to maintain a tight defence.

Thompson will be well aware that a couple of early goals would help settle nerves and allow his charges to play the kind of football of which we know they're capable.

If they can do that the result should never be in doubt and in a couple of weeks' time the team can travel to Montserrat for the away leg with the match as good as in the bag.

But there's absolutely no room for complacency.

There remains some substance to the old cliches we hear week in, week out from soccer bosses around the world - ‘football's a funny game'; ‘there are no easy matches'; ‘it's still eleven players against eleven'.

In football, Goliath seems to get clobbered moreso than in any other sport. Giant-killers still abound.

Bermuda's players have every right to feel confident and should play with an air of confidence.

But against a team of such unknown quantity, so much so that even the Montserratians have no idea how their own team will perform, there's hidden danger.

Let's not become the next Goliath of world football.