Six players who were left out of a 12-member national Futsal team for a cancelled trip to Cuba have been recalled to the training squad for the inaugural Hindu Credit Union Group of Companies-sponsored Caribbean Football Union leg of the World Futsal Championship qualifiers.
The five-day tournament will be hosted by the local football federation from Monday April 19 to 23 at the Sports and Physical Education Centre, University of the West Indies, St Augustine.
Ryan Dipsingh, Jason Bowen, Kevin Davis, Jeremy McPhee, Ricardo Bennett and Andre Fournellier were dropped from a squad named by coach Clayton Morris to oppose regional kings Cuba on a five-day tour of Cuba.
But the trip was cancelled on Friday night after it was felt that the local team would be better served by making the trip later on, after the first stage of the competition, and the six players were called to rejoin the training squad. Morris and Raymond Tim Kee, vice-president of the local football federation, expressed confidence that the locals will qualify for the second stage of the series, to be played in Costa Rica.
The locals will resume training at the UWI venue tomorrow from 5.30pm, while they will play their final warm-up match versus UWI Combined on Frday from 7.30 pm before going into a live-in camp on Sunday.
For the CFU qualifiers T&T team will be at home to Puerto Rico, Grenada and the Netherland Antilles in Group "A" while Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and the Turks and Caicos Islands will compete in Group "B." The group winners will advance to the final round of the CONCACAF preliminaries and will play for the Caribbean title on April 23 while the two runner-up teams will meet in a play-off for third place, to claim the final CFU berth for the tournament in Costa Rica.
The three Caribbean representative teams will join three qualifiers from the North/Central preliminaries, together with Cuba and host team Costa Rica, in the eight-team CONCACAF final round.
From the final round of qualifiers two CONCACAF teams will advance to the FIFA Futsal World Championships, scheduled for Chinese Taipei from November 22 to December 12.
Training Squad:
Wendell Douglas, Clint Ramond, Colin Joseph (Laventille Youths), Perry Martin (Santos), Jason Bowen, Kevin Davis, Jeremy McPhee (Laventille Ball Masters), Jerwyn Balthazar, Ricardo Bennett, Andre Fournellier (Junior Mafia), Ako James, Cordell Greenidge, Anthony Small, (Santos), Kevin Peters, Nkosi Gabriel (Blue Ribbon Dream Team), Anthony Peters (Chemical Ali), Marc Williams (Santa Rosa FC), Marvin Lee (TSTT), (Mayaro Spurs), Ryan Dipsingh (Caroni), Jason Valley (Leeds FC), Kevin Graham, Sterling O'Brien (Joe Public)