Corneal pleased with Under-16s.
By: Joel Bailey (Newsday).[/size]
Anotn Corneal, coach of the Trinidad and Tobago Under-16 football team, is pleased with the squad's third-placed finish at the recent Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Youth Cup tournament.
Not bad, was how Corneal described the team's performance. We have to put things into perspective. The first round was not a difficult round, with Aruba, Grenada and Guyana, even (though) all those teams are getting closer to us, he said.
The day and age for just beating those teams like Grenada and Guyana are coming to an end. We might have had good results against them. But the two true matches were the Haiti game and the Barbados game, he said.
Haiti defeated Trinidad and Tobago 1-0 in the second round for a spot in the final while the hosts whipped Jamaica 2-0 for the bronze medal.
I thought, against Haiti, we showed signs for long periods that we can play with these teams, Corneal said. And, of course, the Jamaica game, we, actually, were all over Jamaica.
Jamaica could have been beaten 5-0, he added. We created a lot of goal-scoring opportunities. They weren't blunders from Jamaica, it was from our play.
It means that, somewhere along the line, things are sticking with our players just at the right time, he said.
Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti and Jamaica all progressed to the 2007 CONCACAF Under-17 Final Round, which is carded for April next year.
We are six-seven months (away) from our tournament which gives us time now to prepare, Corneal said. The preparations need to start right now.
Corneal, who also serves as the assistant to Soca Warriors coach Wim Rijsbergen, is adamant that the time between the Youth Cup and the CONCACAF qualifiers must be spent implementing a proper plan.
It's quite clear that we need to do a lot of strength work, strength endurance, technical speed, he said. We have to continue speed of play which, at the higher level, is a key for success and to be able to type of experience so we can have a little bit more maturity in our play which we see in spurts but we need to see in long periods of the game. We need the exposure, we need the experience for us to help complete the package, he added.
The former national midfielder was also of the view that the team needs a few overseas tours to give the players the more exposure.
The day and age for us to say we don't need to tour or we just need to go play two matches is gone, he said. You just speak to any one of those top teams, what they do to prepare for tournaments.
They're putting in their homework, he added. If we don't put in our homework, we would be behind.
The good thing we have is that it is in front of us so we have time to plan and put our plan in place and I think that will give us the best possible chance to qualify, he said.