Trinidad and Tobago’s Under 20 and Under 17 teams will have the chance to warm up for their upcoming World qualifying matches with back to back friendlies against the Venezuelan National youth teams at the Marvin Lee Stadium, Centre of Excellence on November 5 and 7.
This was revealed by TTFF marketing manager Peter O’Connor on Wednesday who added that the matches are now confirmed and both the Venezuela Under 20 and Under 17 teams, also preparing for the Conmebol world qualifiers, have accepted the invitation of the TTFF to come and test the young “Soca Warriors”.
T&T’s Under 20 and Under 17 teams face off with Cuba in the final round of the Caribbean Football Union tournament in Port of Spain on November 19 and in Havana on November 26.
Several members of the T&T teams are currently engaged in the British Gas Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) and will go into the Intercol tournament soon. National Under 20 coach Anton Corneal and Nigel Grosvenor, coach of the Under 17s, welcomed the upcoming friendlies, saying that it should be the perfect test for their teams which continue to train even while the Schools League goes on.
“It’s good exposure for us, especially against Venezuela which has been improving and is as good, if not better than Cuba,” Corneal told TTFF Media. “It will be a good exercise for us.”
Corneal added that he will stop all National Under 20 players from taking part in the Schools league four days before the first friendly in order to have them join the team camp. His team has recently been producing credible performances against the senior teams of North East Stars, Starworld Strikers and Joe Public.
Grosvenor could invite his players to camp earlier as he realized during recent training sessions that the majority of the players campaigning in the SSFL are struggling fitness wise. This he says iss a major concern as they prepare for international duty.
“We started back our training recently as the boys have been playing with their respective school teams. The biggest concern for us is that their physical level is not where it should be at this point. I think this has to do also with the way in which the league is running with so many games being played over a short period. They can’t put out the amount of fitness work because of the amount of games being played. The players have maintained their touches but the actual fitness is not there. That is only concern right now and we will concentrate on fixing that because obviously the boys are eager to play Venezuela. We will be going all out to ensure that we are also in top shape for the Cubans,” Grosvenor told TTFF Media.
Grosvenor’s boys, guided by captain Javed Mohammed were in dominant form in the recent CFU preliminaries, with wins over Barbados (6-2), St Lucia (8-1) and Bahamas (14-1) and the coach said that he expects to maintain the same squad for the upcoming matches.
“We had a chemistry going when we were in Tobago and we don’t want to change that. Really what we need to do now is to instill into the players again how important it is for us to go the distance,” Grosvenor added.