While the senior men’s team is in Denver, Colorado, USA, beginning a residential training camp today ahead of its upcoming Concacaf World Cup qualifier against the USA, this country’s national under 15 boys team is also at work as head coach Russell Latapy continues preparing the team for the 2017 Concacaf Under-15 Championship set to take place at the IMG Academy in Tampa in August.
A former national stand-out and FC Porto and Glasgow Rangers, Latapy invited additional home-based players to his training session at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva yesterday, coming from the various local zones as he has a final look at players who have been knocking on the door or narrowly missed out on making the cut prior to the team’s participation at the Cayman Airways Invitational Youth Under-15 Cup recently.
“What we’ve done is invited some players into the sessions and also called back in a few of the boys who were previously involved as we try to ensure we have a proper look and a thorough assessment of as much as the players as possible before making the selection for the Concacaf tournament in August,” Latapy said.
“There’s no harm in doing this even though it’s not an open trial as such because we’ve already gone through that process of screening the players from the different zones earlier this year. We are working every week and we can afford to make use of every opportunity we have when it comes to assessing players but we are doing it in an organised manner so it’s not a situation where players can just show up to a training session. The players must be invited by the national team coaching staff at this level,” added the former Glasgow Rangers man.
Latapy said he was pleased with the programmes being implemented by the T&T Football Association (T&TFA) in an attempt to have the widest and best possible pool of players at youth level.
“This is the future and we can only improve our players with proper development programmes and by doing it consistently. It’s the only way we are going give ourselves a fair chance of competing with the best in the region and by extension the world. We have the Under-17 team also preparing for the next Under 20 qualification as currently you can see the Under-20 World Cup taking place in South Korea and those are the competitions we want to be involved in. We must strive to qualify for the next Under-20 and Under-17 World Cups,” Latapy added.