Young Boyz face Trinidad in Concacaf Under 17 warm-up
Published:Saturday | February 4, 2023 | 12:41 AMDaniel Wheeler/Staff Reporter
National under-17 men’s coach Merron Gordon is hoping that his young charges are able to display the fruits of their month of training camp in the first of two friendlies against Trinidad and Tobago as the Concacaf Under-17 Championship draws closer.
The young Reggae Boyz will face the visitors today at the Anthony Spaulding Sports Complex at 4 p.m. The matches are a part of the preparations for the Concacaf Under-17 Championships in Guatemala, which begin on February 11. The squad has been in camp since January with the final 20-man squad announced on Wednesday.
In their bid to use their defensive strength as part of their game plan for the tournament, Gordon said he was looking to see how structured the team can be against the young Soca Warriors knowing the tough opposition that they will face in the tournament.
“For the past month, we worked a lot on the structure of the team defensively and we want to hold the shape as much as possible, tight spaces between the lines because we don’t want people to penetrate us easily,” Gordon told The Gleaner,”Going to a major tournament like the (Concacaf Under-17) you want to be mean in defence and then hopefully we can catch people in traps that we are going to set and counter-attack.”
Gordon said he had not solidified yet in his mind his preferred starting 11 for the tournament, but hopes that the two-game series will answer those questions ahead of their tournament opener against Cuba on February 12, opponents that they are not taking lightly.
“The thing about it is we selected 20 boys who we think can do the job for us. And we are going to try our best to look at all 20 in both games and hopefully we can get a solid 11 into the first game against Cuba,” Gordon said, “We have the utmost respect for the Cubans. Over the years at every level, it is a tight game. So we are going to look at the boys and see who can solidify their places.”
Seven of the 20 players are overseas-based and despite having the challenge to manage their workload over the past month, he is excited for the boys to display what they have learnt, in their quest to qualify for the Under-17 World Cup later this year.
“The boys really adapted well. It has been a tough month for them. We have to balance the work and the rest because we don’t want them to go into a tournament tired. They have been playing so far against older teams,” Gordon said, “This is the first time that they will be playing against their age group. Hopefully we can see what they have learnt during the past month.”
The second game will be at St Elizabeth Technical High on Tuesday at 4 p.m.