Imagine producing one of the best performances of your career, in one of the biggest games you have played in — only to end up on the losing side.

Just 24 hours after pulling off some miraculous saves in Bermuda’s 3-2 defeat by Curaçao, goalkeeper Dale Eve was still wrestling with his emotions as he prepared to board a flight home from the Dutch-Caribbean island.

Without Eve’s heroics, Bermuda would have lost by a far greater margin, with even coach Michael Findlay saying he was “fearing the worst” after 25 minutes — by which time the man between the posts had already come to the rescue of his team on a number of occasions.

So while the 30-year-old can take pride in his Herculean effort, his overwhelming feeling is one of disappointment that Bermuda failed to pick up at least a point from the game.

“With it still being pretty fresh on my mind, I’m obviously disappointed with the result, but I can still be a little pleased with how I played,” Eve said.

“I gave 110 per cent and put it all on the line in the hope we could at least nick a point, but we were just unfortunate not to.

“It’s a double-edged sword — I feel good about having a wonderful individual performance, but at the same time gutted with the end result.

“We have a tendency to look individually at performances, but I like to take in the performance of everyone. Maybe a week from now, I will look back and say, ‘Yeah, you had a big game’. But at the moment I’m feeling a bit down considering what we could have taken from that game. I did what I could, but mentally I’m still upset.”

Eve made saves with all parts of his body, noticeably his legs which appeared to be as much as five feet of his 6ft 3in frame. But that is nothing new to the shot-stopper, who has played that way since he was a child.

“Being a goalkeeper that is outfielder-minded, I always tended to make saves with my feet first growing up, so that’s always been one of my strong attributes,” he said.

“I’ve always found it easier getting low, making foot saves and working with John [Moreira], Bermuda’s goalkeeping coach, we do many sessions with one-on-one saves. As long as I continue topping up in those areas, everything with my feet I am pretty comfortable with.”

Findlay described Eve as “a gamer” in his post-match interview, with the goalkeeper literally and figuratively the first name on the teamsheet since the Canadian took over the job.

Despite the two defeats in the international window, Eve is full of praise for the coach and confident that the squad can improve on the recent international window.

“He’s a wonderful coach and he puts a lot of faith in myself, so it’s always great to hear good feedback from him,” Eve said

“It’s always a difficult situation regarding internationals in terms of how much time you have together and how much information you have to cram into such a short window, as well as the travel situation.

“We only landed in Curaçao the afternoon before, after being up at 5am to travel, and trained that evening. The boys have been incredible in not making that a factor and making sure that we give our all.

“We understand the opportunity that’s in front of us, this being a stage we’ve never been on before and, although results haven’t gone our way, it’s a very positive atmosphere.

“There is still a lot of belief, a lot of enthusiastic mindsets going forward and we feel that we can still give our country something to be proud of.

“We are one of the biggest underdogs in all of the final groups around the world. We’re running on pride right now and you never know what might happen. There are four games on and we’ll be putting in the best performances we can.”