Get in the game!

Watching the match between the Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname youngsters with them, I wondered at their thoughts. This was the first live game by a national team at any level I was seeing for quite some time.

But as I put together my notes and jotted down the well-taken goals by Johan Peltier and skipper Sheldon Bateau that clinched the two-legged tie and qualification to the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, a question nagged at me.

It was the same question that has dogged me at every club game I’ve watched this year: Where?
Where is the skilful play that always seemed natural to local players? Where was the flair on the ball, where was the dribbling?

From defence to attack, the team I watched Monday was efficient enough. I assume they carried out coach Zoran Vranes’ instructions. Suriname were allowed just one decent attempt on goal all game and they scored it. But I wondered how entertained were the people who were no doubt happy for the T&T victory.

Keith Look Loy, the technical advisor to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation, was in the audience at Macoya. He too was concerned by what he saw.

“The defensive line pretty much was solid... The core of the team going up the middle with Bateau in the centre there is pretty good, but it lacks creative thinking,” he told me. “That is something that needs to be addressed and, of course, up front, we had innumerable opportunities to score and ended up winning by two goals to one.

“That’s a major area to be looked at, the goalscoring. It requires in my view not only work in these areas, but also the discovery or the search for new players.”

His words made me remember promising Shahdon Winchester, who was removed from the forward line at half-time after what was a very quiet 45 minutes. Is it that T&T no longer have the kind of creative, penetrative player as before?

“This is a difficult question to answer because supposedly in Trinidad and Tobago football we have a lot of players with flair and skill,” Look Loy said.

“But you know, as we call it, touches on the ball are useless if you don’t know how to use them and when to use them, and that is skill... We’re lacking that type of player. I think possibly coaches across the globe and certainly in Trinidad and Tobago no longer trust that kind of player.

They see that player as a potential source of weakness or vulnerability, particularly in centre midfield. Maybe that player will take risks and therefore lose the ball and create problems... We need (such players) not only in the Under-20 team, I think in the senior men’s team as well. That weakness is glaring and it is something we have to address.”

It is a problem for Look Loy and the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation’s other technical people to address. I have wondered for many years how serious the TTFF really are about developing football talent. I do not see the evidence of such seriousness, or least, an end product.

The Federation have spent millions on preparing teams for competition. But is it not more necessary to invest in grooming good footballers for those teams? It was good to pick Look Loy’s brain.

He told me that four years ago a comprehensive development programme had been developed with the focus being: 1. qualifying coaches; 2. organsing youth football better; and 3. establishing a more comprehensive screening programme, “not just for national teams, but the ongoing screening process as conducted by clubs, as conducted by regional associations and as conducted by national teams”.

Because of a lack of funding, most of those plans are still just the stuff of paper and dreams. But in January, the Federation will begin a coach licensing course in conjunction with the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB).

For Look Loy, if money can’t be found for anything else, it must be found for coaching education.

“Without good coaching, our talent will only mature to the level which the talent will carry itself and this is not good enough if we proclaim ourselves to be a World Cup country.”

Always passionate about things football, Look Loy is adamant that coaching in T&T in 2010 is inadequate to take the game forward.

“In Trinidad and Tobago, I’ll say it, we have lots of coaches and we have no coaches... There are a lot of people across this country who are very dedicated to coaching...and it is not their fault if they’re not trained in modern methodology and modern ideas of how the game should be coached and how the game should be played. This is not their fault. This is fundamentally the responsibility of the TTFF, we accept that and we’re seeking now to do something about it.”

Look Loy was similarly clear that youth programmes need revamping. He has not given up on the ability of today’s youngsters.

“It’s inarguable, Trinidad and Tobago has a lot of talent, all foreign coaches and observers who come to Trinidad and Tobago recognise this...what is needed is the marriage of this talent and good coaching from the lowest age-group level.”

I asked about the value of the Pro League’s youth league.

“In the sense that it is better than nothing, it serves a useful purpose. But my club, FC Santa Rosa, we have played in that League, we played for two years in that League as Tobago United and, frankly, the youth competition in that league is treated merely as a necessary evil, something that we know we have to do...let’s just do it quickly. Not enough attention is paid to youth sections in the clubs and the training of coaches.”

All the time the phrase, “training of “coaches”, comes up as we speak. “Training of coaches”, it’s a Look Loy mantra.

Hear another way he makes the point: “The biggest contributing element to good football, after talent, of course, is coaching. If we don’t have enough equipment, we could fight. If we don’t have the best fields to train and play on, we could fight. But if we don’t have the talent and coaching, there is nothing we can do to be successful.”

As always in this place, though, knowing what to do is one thing, doing it is quite something else.

The football generations from the 1990s to the present have suffered from the TTFF’s lack of implementation, their own absence of creativity and resourcefulness.

President Oliver Camps and company, get in the game!

Please !