Digicel Cup prep starts after Big 6
Source: - Trinidad Express
WIM RIJSBERGEN will begin preparing the Trinidad and Tobago national football team for the Digicel Caribbean Cup at the conclusion of the T&T Pro League Big 6 competition which ends this weekend.
Rijsbergen was speaking following his trip to the United States to screen players for the Caribbean Cup which runs from January 12-23 in T&T.
The draw for the competition will be made at 10 a.m. today at the Crowne Plaza hotel, where representatives of T&T, Cuba, Martinique, Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana and Guadeloupe, will draw for positions.
The Caribbean tournament is the main qualifier for the 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup that is scheduled to take place from 6-24 June in cities across the USA. The top four Caribbean teams at the end of the Digicel Caribbean Cup will qualify for the Gold Cup.
Rijsbergen is in the same predicament faced by ex-coach Bertille St Clair, when his T&T team struggled to third place during last year's tournament in Barbados. Like St Clair, Rijsbergen's team will also be also be without most of T&T's foreign professionals who are unlikely to be released because the Digicel Caribbean Cup final falls on a date outside of FIFA'S officials match day calendar. Rijsbergen says his plans are to have a team made up of local players and a few youngsters based in the United States.
"Hopefully when the local league finishes with the Big 6, we will be able to identify all the local players we need and bring them together with the players we have seen in the United States. Then, we will be able to see how they compare with the locally-based players."
Rijsbergen has only just returned from the US on a screening mission where he looked at college and other footballers based there. On Tuesday night, the Dutchman was also seen at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, taking in Tuesday night's Big Six match between CL Financial San Juan Jabloteh and W Connection. After looking at some 30 players in South Carolina, Dutchman Rijsbergen said there were some prospects and that he was looking forward to bringing them together.
"It was a good trip and the boys were really enthusiastic," he said. "We were looking for players for the senior and under-20 teams and hopefully we will give a few others a chance as well. As soon as we can, maybe when the Big Six is over in December, we will begin the preparation for the Digicel Cup."
Rijsbergen said that one of the exercises he will be doing with his team is to show them a tape of Trinidad and Tobago's recent 4-1 defeat to Austria and explain to them the areas in which T&T footballers have to develop to reach international standard.
Kingman
