Senior Men’s National Team Head Coach Terry Fenwick welcomed Watford midfielder Daniel Phillips into the camp as he trained for the first time on Friday at the Pan American Stadium. Also joining was English-based midfielder Andre Boucaud.
Phillips said he was keen to wear the T&T shirt and is hoping to make a key contribution to the team’s efforts.
“It’s been a long time coming and I’m just really happy to finally be here. Everyone’s welcomed me very well and I’m just happy to get to work. My dad was born and raised in Trinidad as well as my grandparents and I’ve visited the country already.
My ambition is to go to the highest stage possible so playing for Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup qualifiers is a big deal,” Phillips told TTFA Media on Saturday.
“I want to play in the hardest, most important games straight away. I’m hoping to just bring a level of quality and just push everyone else and they will push me as well. Based of the first session on Friday, I was really impressed. Everyone gets on really well. It was really a high intensity from the start to the finish and I thought that was really impressive,” the 20-year-old added.
Meanwhile, a training match which was tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning between this country’s Senior National Men’s Team and local Dominican Republic club Atletico Pantoja, was cancelled in the best interest of the members of the contingent, due to a breach in the standard Covid-19 Protocols.
The match, which was arranged to be played at the club’s home base, was abandoned on the advice of T&T team doctor Akash Dhanai, after a thorough assessment of the Covid-19 tests undergone by the Pantoja players was determined to fall short of the TTFA’s and FIFA’s medical standards.
In this regard, the decision was taken to cancel the match to ensure that the safety of T&T players and staff would not have been compromised ahead of next Thursday’s Concacaf World Cup qualifier against Guyana. All members of the T&T team have been following strict Covid-19 regulations in keeping with FIFA and Concacaf’s International Match Protocols since the commencement of a bio-secure bubble at the Home of Football in Couva on March 16th.
Head Coach Fenwick and his staff later conducted a training session with the team in the afternoon period.
In related news, it has been confirmed that there will be no spectators at Thursday’s World Cup qualifier at the Pan American Stadium and the same will apply to the qualifier hosted by Puerto Rico in that country on March 28th in keeping with the Covid-19 risk mitigation.
Watch Daniel Phillips keen to start international career with T&T