Youth teams intensify preparations for CFU and Concacaf tournaments

Training for the various national teams will be intensified in the coming weeks as the countdown to their participation in key Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and Concacaf youth tournaments in the July-September window draws closer.

Guyana is scheduled to participate in six youth tournaments, namely:

Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Qualifiers, July 13-21, 2019 in Guyana

Preliminary Round of Men’s Under-23 Olympic Qualifier (home and away matches), July 17-21 2019

CFU Girl’s Under-14, August 1-12, 2019 (Group 5) in the Dominican Republic

Concacaf Under-15 Boys Championship, August 4-12, 2019 at the IMG Academy

Concacaf Under-17 Women’s Championship, August 21-25, 2019

Caribbean Football Union Boys Under-14 in September 2019

Preparations, which began in May, saw teams engaged in a weekly schedule of training at the GFF National Training Centre, Providence.

“The preparation is taking the form of two weekly sessions for all the youth teams utilising week days from 16:00h to 18:00h and weekends when available for an additional two hours,” said Bryan Joseph, Guyana Football Federation’s Youth Development Officer.

“We have been implementing or applying the new strategy relative to how we prepare national teams so we’re not doing short, compressed preparation anymore. We’re doing preparation over a longer period. While the number of sessions do not increase, what increases is the period of time that we are actually spending in preparing the groups,” Joseph added.

Commenting on the composition of the technical squad, Joseph said this is being led by the Technical Department: “We haven’t yet been able to confirm the staff for the various groups even though respective individuals have been identified and have been working with the various groups. There is some overlapping taking place but as we get closer to tournament date and encampment, we’ll finalise the respective staff.”

Players are taken from the various Academy Training Centres (ATCs) as well as from scouting activities and those identified by the various Technical Development Officer (TDOs). Detailed lists of provisional squads will soon be available.

For the Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Qualifiers, Guyana has been placed in Group A along with Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, Suriname and St. Lucia. Matches are scheduled for the National Track and Field Centre, Leonora, and Warner Park, St. Kitts and Nevis.

The match schedule for Guyana is as follows:

July 13– Guyana vs Bermuda at 18:00h

July 19– Guyana vs St. Lucia at 18:00h

July 21– Guyana vs Suriname at 16:00h