All members of the Trinidad and Tobago national Under 20 and under 17 teams have been ordered by their respective managements to refrain from taking part in the Royal Bank Intercol series as of Tuesday this week as their teams begin intensifying preparations for the upcoming Caribbean Football Union World qualifying matches against Cuba.
Both teams are expected to go into live in camps as they prepare for the matches against Cuba on November 19 at the Lee Stadium.
Reflecting on the matches against the Venezuelans, particularly the 2-1 loss on Sunday, Grosvenor said both matches were a suitable test for his team.
"The important thing for us was seeing the speed of which we need to play. We have been working on this in training but it was vital for us to experience this in a match situation and that is what we got here," Grosvenor told TTFF Media.
"The guys realized that they took too long to settle in the first half and when we stepped up the pace after the break, we started to enjoy more of the game." He pointed out for instance skipper Javed Mohammed playing on the left flank and dominating because of the amount of passes he received in the preliminary Caribbean zone series earlier this year, but had now struggled to do much because of the fact that the service to him needed to be at a faster rate against the quicker Venezuelans. "This is now something we will work on even more because Javed is a critical distributor of the ball for us from out on the left and we need to get the ball to him," Grosvenor added.
"We are definitely going to intensify preparations now. Mentally we realized that we can match international teams like Venezuela and we understand they have a similar style to the Cubans. What we need to do though is be able to maintain our standard for 90 minutes," Grosvenor added.
Mohammed, noted as the first Indian to skipper a national team, believes that his team will step up to the Cuban test.
"The international experience was a plus for us. We have a much better idea of what is needed for us to compete at this level," Mohammed said. "Some of the players were led weary because of the Colleges League but now we should be able to get some added rest and be ready for the matches against Cuba. We had a better idea of how to take the game to the Venezuelans in the second half. We came out a bit lethargic in the first half but after half time we were able to pick up the pace and I think once we can keep that up we should be able to put up a good showing. We know what the challenge is and we will be going out there to overcome it."
Meantime, the TTFF has opened invitation for players from the East Zone born in 1990 or 1991 to attend a screening session for the 2007 Under 17 selection scheduled for WASA grounds, St Joseph this Sunday from 8-12 midday. The session will be overlooked by Corneal who has already held previous screening sessions as he goes about his selection process for the National Under 15 team which will become the Under 17 team by 2007.