Trinidad and Tobago Football Association Technical Director Muhammad Isa has said that efforts will be made to provide the National Under 20 Men’ Team with the best preparation possible over the 14-week period leading up to its Caribbean Football Union Final Round in Curacao in October.
Isa observed the team’s recent performances at the CFU First ground at the Ato Boldon Stadium where he was accompanied by a team of technical analysts set up by the TTFA to provide statistics on the matches aimed at assisting the team in its post-mortem of the tournament.
“The team performed well in my opinion, based on the time they had to prepare for the tournament,” Isa told TTFA Media on Saturday.
“We need to improve our defensive play, areas like marking and covering the opposition. I thought we were good offensively, we created a lot of opportunities but we need to improve on our finishing.
“With fourteen weeks left before the next tournament, we should be able to get up to a sufficient level. We will be looking at playing a couple international games before the Finals. And the tournament will be played on Turf which means that our preparation will have to planned with that in mind and we will be trying to have as much preparation on turf pitches before we get to the tournament.
“We also set up a technical analyst team during the last tournament and we are in the process of completing those reports which I expect will help the team in its assessment of the past performances,” Isa said, adding that the T&T Under 17 Men’s Team will also need to play international matches before entering the CFU Final Round to be staged in T&T in September.
Isa also attended the Copa America Centenario earlier this month for which he thanked the TTFA for opportunity. T&T head coach Stephen Hart also attended a couple matches.
“That was a very useful and insightful experience for me in my capacity as Technical Director and I wish to thank the TTFA for the opportunity. I was able to see some of the matches live, games such as Costa Rica and Colombia and Mexico against Venezuela. Once we are into the ‘Hex’ next year, it is expected that we will face teams like Costa Rica and Mexico and this gave us an opportunity to make an assessment of their play at this point in time,” Isa said.
He described his role within the TTFA since being appointed as Technical Director a few weeks ago as “work in progress”.
“It’s a work in progress. We have had several meetings at the TTFA Technical committee level. There are plans to launch the coach education program as well as the Grassroots program in September.”
Isa also spoke of the launch of an Elite Player Development program which he said includes local coaches working together to oversee the program.
“The group of individuals working on the elite players program includes the technical director, Rajeesh Latchoo, Jamaal Shabazz, Stuart Charles Fevrier, Jinelle James, Anthony Creece, Caleb De Souza and we will have Marlon Charles and Joanne Daniel involved also. This is an exciting project as it deals specifically with emphasis being placed on the development of our elite players geared towards raising their level for international football,” Isa stated.
The TTFA recently hosted a FIFA Solidarity Contribution and Training Compensation Workshop for local clubs and will stage a club licensing workshop within the upcoming weeks.