National U-15 squad ready for international encounter

Dec 20, 2016 Sports

– Critical thinking encouraged

Georgetown: The Guyana National Under-15 team were set to play their first game in the Claude Elise Under-15 football Tournament last evening against Martinique in French Guiana.

Guyana Under-15 footballers and coaching staff take time out for a photo.

This is the first international encounter of 2016 for the squad and it is being served as preparation for the August 2017 CONCACAF U-15 tournament.
Technical Director, Ian Greenwood, said: “Ultimately, what we need to stress (is) it is a development tournament; we’re not trying to win the tournament. We’re going there to try to develop these boys and make them ready for next year’s competition. We’ve got a lot of individual talent. We still need to do a lot of work on how we play as a team, how we defend as a team and how we attack as a team and the idea of this tournament is to give the boys exposure away from home, exposure to tournament football and, most importantly, exposure to playing better opposition to what they’ve been exposed to before so we’re confident in terms of the developmental process and looking forward to next year.”
Prior to departure on the 15th December, Head Coach, Bryan Joseph, noted that critical thinking was one of the skills imparted in the squad. “We’ve created a positive learning environment in the camp for the kids by encouraging them to be themselves first. We’ve adopted an approach where we basically question them in such a way that they can think and come up with the appropriate answers so they’ve been challenged throughout the duration of the camp. In terms of our on-field preparation, the same was carried over there. The coaching sessions were structured in such a way that the players had to think about the decisions that they’re making. Obviously, we provided the guide, we provided the challenges and I think that they have done very well to step up to those challenges.”
Commenting on the fitness of the team, Joseph noted: “The fitness is not where we would have liked it to be. Obviously, a lot of the players would have played in the NAMILCO U-17 tournament … So, we did a lot of work in the initial days of the camp, trying to get the players
up to a proper fitness level, we think we have achieved that so I think right now, the players are
at a level where they can compete in the short-term.”
Guyana’s second game is scheduled for the 20th against Guadeloupe at 18:30hrs.