The solution to the problem is simple. Have meaningful programs for the U23, U20, U18, U16, U14. Have these teams exposed to regular competition....high level competition.
Once this is done we will not have the problem of blooding new/young players into the Senior team, players will be ready to perform once they are selected.
Look at Europe. They have U21 Championships that run along with their Senior team competition. When ever It have FIFA Game Days you always hearing bout England U21 playing somebody..... Imagine ManU players, Smalling played with the England Senior team and Jones played with the England U21s last Wednesday.......What were our promising young talented players doing??
you don't even need to look to europe, look at what has happended right at home. the u-15-20 program starting in 2005 yielded big dividends. we now have a player pool stocked with good quality players like cyrus, primus, bateau, williams, de silva, paul, molino, bentick, aubrey david, gonzales. these guys were regularly fed top quality friendly games against the likes of honduras, brazil, venezuela, paraguay, costa rica, nigeria, south korea, peru and mexico.
that whole exercise came about because the youth team immediately precdeing them, under brian williams, was packed with talent. that squad had keon daniel, carlisle mitchell, lester peltier, khaleem hyland, atullah guerra, aaron downing, javed mohammed and others. their training was minimal..preparations started very late, their prep oppostion was one setta pro-league and super league sides, and they were loosing left right and centre to the like of St Kitts. brian williams make a stink and they finally got venezuela as a practice match. but it was too little too late, they did not even get out of CFU. that such a talent laden squad did so poorly shocked the ttff, and that is when they started listening to men like Lincoln Phillips, Brian Williams, and yes Anton Corneal, who had been bawling for better preparations for years.
now these same players like guerra, daniel, mitchell, peltier and hyland form the core of our current team and men surprise when they struggling with caribbean teams.
as for shabazz question....the worst part is how the ttff failed to grasp the obvious. that better preparation leads to better results. the prep for the most recent U-20 consisted of playing play
biche united and canada. the result? a cutarse from
curacao and sent packing from CFU qualifying.
the truth is our most successful team of all time was among the least talented of its generation. imagine where we would be if guerra, hyland, mitchell abu bakhr, and daniel's team had the attention leston paul's team received?
shabazz knows that our more senior players will take us further in the gold cup. but in lieu of a real development program and the disadvantages we face relative to the dominant teams in concacaf maybe we should use the gold cup to push some the younger generation, seeing as their experience consists of little more than SSFL and biche united. or else we will be still crying years from now
