Despite arriving in Spain on Monday morning, the Trinidad and Tobago Senior Men’s team is yet to get in a training session ahead of the Friendly International versus the United Arab Emirates scheduled for Thursday in Girona.
Dennis Lawrence and his men were scheduled to hit the training pitch in Barcelona on the afternoon of their arrival but despite promises from the match agent this never materialised. The situation worsen on Tuesday with players and staff awaiting confirmation of their six o’clock session in Girona. At 5:45pm there was no word from the representative assigned to the team or his colleagues.
The Head Coach was obviously not pleased. “At the moment I have to say it has been very very disappointing for all the efforts we have made to come over here and be well prepared. We approached the TTFA to fund us being here an extra day just in terms of our preparation and at the moment it has just gone all to waste because of the representatives of the UAE. I am disappointed for the players, I disappointed for football.”
TTFA President David John Williams is in continuous contact with Lawrence and has reached out the the UAE to solve the situation. “I am fully aware of the situation in Spain as I was updated by Coach Dennis and manager Richard Piper. They have our full support from this end and we are confident they will make the right decisions to protect our integrity” John-Williams told TTFA Media.
“The contract with the UAE catered to all the team’s training requirements and we will continue liaising with them to iron out these issues” the President concluded.
Lawrence also touched on those contractual arrangements “We were really excited to come over here and fulfil this fixture, players came over in good spirits and now we get to this situation where things contractually agreed to were not provided by the representatives of the UAE, because I don’t believe is the UAE Football Association itself, I believe it’s the representative of the match agent, those are the ones that got everything wrong in terms of no bus turning up for our training sessions and no pitches arranged.”
Disappointing was the word Lawrence closed with.
SOURCE: ttfootball.org