BRIAN WILLIAMS, coach of the Trinidad and Tobago Under- 20 football team, is eying a camp for the squad ahead of the CONCACAF Under- 20 Championship, which will take place in Costa Rica from February 17 to March 5.
A total of 12 teams, in three groups, will be participating in the event, which will see four teams qualify for the 2017 FIFA Under- 20 World Cup in South Korea.
Trinidad and Tobago have been drawn in Group C, alongside hosts Costa Rica, El Salvador and Bermuda.
Williams, in an interview on the TT Football Association (TTFA) website, is impressed with how things have been going with the team since they resumed preparations earlier this month.
“Things are going pretty okay at this point in time,” he said. “Presently we have about 32 local players in training .
We train every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings and I’m pretty pleased with how preparations are going at this point in time. What I’m happy about is the competitiveness within the training sessions.
“We also have some new guys that we called up into training,” he continued. “So I’m taking a keen look at them.
Some of those guys (are) looking promising.
I don’t need to call names but I should say training is on course and we’re hoping to do a camp from the 8th of January to the 18th.
From that camp we’ll look at our final 20-26 players to go on tour, either to Colombia or Brazil, before we get to Costa Rica.” The dreadlocked Williams, who featured as a right-back on the Strike Squad team who narrowly missed out on a spot on the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, is hopeful of getting men’s team winger Levi Garcia in the squad for the CONCACAF phase.
The 19-year-old Garcia currently plays for AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch Eredivisie.
“We have 32 players right now,” said Williams .
“We’re looking at getting Levi Garcia into the squad but we’re working really hard on that. We’re hoping to get him to join the squad.” One player who has left a good impression on Williams in the training sessions is Denmark-born midfielder Mark Gangiah.
According to the Under- 20 coach, “he came to train and did two weeks training with us. A really nice player, very athletic, a midfielder (who) can play both attacking and defensive.
He (has) some document work to do in terms of acquiring his Trinidad and Tobago passport.”