Trinidad and Tobago’s senior team minus one player had two full sessions at the Irving Robbins Middle School training ground under chilly conditions on Monday leading up to Wednesday’s 2006 World Cup qualifier against the USA.
Head coach Leo Beenhakker welcomed Marvin Andrews into the camp at the Sheraton Hotel on Monday midday and he was part of the afternoon training session. Scheduled to arrive on Monday night was National Quarries North East Stars player Anthony Wolfe as a late replacement for injured midfielder Brent Rahim. Wolfe will be the 18th player in the camp with Scott Sealy, Avery John, Dennis Lawrence, Shaka Hislop, Kelvin Jack, Collin Samuel and Stern John all checking in at the Sheraton on Sunday.
With the Dutch-born coach expected to pick up the paces with an almost full squad at his disposal, the ‘Warriors” were undergoing their warm up routine on Monday morning with trainer Zeph Nicholas as the sprinklers came on at one end of the field and kept going for at least twenty minutes. Moments earlier Beenhakker had just marked off a portion of the area under water with orange cones for the start of his session. The venue manager strutted across in time to have it switched off as skipper Dwight Yorke and company finished their warm up.
Beenhakker was not fazed by the extra bit of water on a morning which was more chilly than the previous two days following the thunderstorm here the night before.
“We have all arrived and here for this game on Wednesday now and obviously the focus aside from everything else has to be on winning this match,” Beenhakker said.
“Nobody else can do it for us and the coaches can’t do it. We help to prepare you as best as possible. Coaches might lose the game but they can’t win it. You the players have to make that win happen,” he told the players. “Of course now we have to monitor our progress as a team. For us to get a good performance and result on Wednesday depends on how good we can get it as a team now and for the actual match.”
The camp so far hasn’t been at all a down-spirited one. Skipper Yorke has been carrying the troops up until Sunday and Beenhakker hasn’t let anything affect the overall mood and shape at the Sheraton.
So far at training, casual observers, joggers and kids playing with footballs have been all too eager to run down the official Nike match balls that the “Warriors” have used in training and goalkeeper coach Michael Maurice made a decent enough replacement in goal in the absence of Hislop and Jack up until Monday.
One of the exercises Beenhakker has been using with assistant Wim Rhisbergen monitoring has been interval training where the focus is on ball possession and tactical awareness going forward and defending as well as working well with an increase in heart rate over shorter distances.
It involves three players per side playing within an 18 yard space. Additionally, one is placed to stand in front of each of the two small goals to provide, not protection, but support for the attacking team. The players are encouraged to take no more than two touches on the ball as they pass it around on their way to goal, then the player closest to the goal has to play it into the one standing in front the goal who in turns lays it off for an oncoming player (not the final passer) to shoot home. The game is played over three minute periods.
“It really is used to help develop closer ball possession and support among the players. As you can see in the match itself when we take the ball out of defense and go forward, sometimes when the ball gets to the midfielders and they try to get it up to the forwards, the play breaks down because there is not sufficient support at that stage but too many gaps. It also helps to improves the player’s thinking and heartbeat rate,” Rhisbergen explained.