Leo concerned about fitness

The national team coach made his views known following Thursday’s friendly international against Grenada, where the hosts emerged 4-0 winners at the Manny Ramjohn Stadium, Marabella.

Two days earlier, the TT lads strolled past the Grenadians 4-1 at the Larry Gomes Stadium, Arima.

“In Germany we’ll play the best in the world,” he commented, “so that’s why we’ll have preparation for about four weeks.”

The Netherlands-born coach mentioned the fact that midfielders Silvio Spann and Densil Theobald, who are among the 24 players short-listed on the World Cup team, are among those who lack match fitness due to inactivity at club level.

“Some of them need more physical preparation, some of them need more technical preparation,” he revealed. “So I don’t want to say that the guys are ready for the World Cup.”

Beenhakker pointed out that the locally-based players — Aurtis Whitley, Anthony Rougier, Cyd Gray, Anthony Wolfe and David Atiba Charles — are now regaining their fitness, since the 2006 Pro League season began a few weeks ago. “They’re just starting,” the coach said. “On the local level, they’re fit. It’s no problem but they have to play a little bit higher than local level. “Then, we have some players who had a very tough season like Russell Latapy, Stern John and Carlos Edwards,” Beenhakker said. “So, for them, the first programme would be a little bit more recuperation and recovery for them.

“And we also had players who had a long season in England and Scotland, they did a lot of training, they played some times but most of the times they were on the bench,” he said.

But he gave the assurance that the team will be fully prepared for their first-round fixtures against Sweden, England and Paraguay.

During the Grenada matches, Beenhakker used a number of players outside of his provisional 24-man squad — Gary Glasgow, Kerry Baptiste, Evans Wise, Jan-Michael Williams, Brent Rahim, Glenton Wolfe, Kerry Baptiste and Trent Noel.

“I thought we had two very useful matches,” stated Beenhakker. “We talked about what we can expect in Germany. We tried to make the game a little bit faster.

“I used some players in different positions just to open their eyes a little bit,” he added. “It’s still a little bit up-and-down but we had one day of preparation, or two days. So I’m very satisfied with this mini-camp.”

But the coach said that the technical staff (including assistants Whim Rijsbergen and Anton Corneal) would not be making any drastic changes to the World Cup roster.

“I make my choices and I can assure you that we did our homework,” stressed Beenhakker. “We knew all the players. We saw them earlier in their clubs and some of them were earlier involved in the national team.

“It’s still a pre-selection and we have 24,” Beenhakker added. “Normally, the 23 would come out of the 24 but if there is a reason to make a change I would do it.”