An­drew Gioan­net­ti

There is no short­age of tal­ent­ed foot­ballers in this coun­try. The prob­lem, how­ev­er, is that most lack in the de­part­ments of phys­i­cal and men­tal strength. That may ex­plain the short­age of T&T na­tion­als in the top leagues around the world, ac­cord­ing to head coach of the men's se­nior team, Stephen Hart.

Hart, speak­ing with the Guardian said this is some­thing that can be dras­ti­cal­ly changed when all stake­hold­ers take a mod­ern ap­proach to the game.

In elab­o­rat­ing, Hart ad­mit­ted: "the ma­jor­i­ty (of play­ers) are not pre­pared phys­i­cal­ly to meet the chal­lenges of in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball."

Most re­cent­ly, Hart's team placed run­ner-up at con­sec­u­tive Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Caribbean Cups last month, los­ing in a penal­ty-shoot out to host na­tion Ja­maica in the fi­nal.

There was no short­age of tal­ent in that squad, yet the play­ers seem­ing­ly failed to ap­proach the match as a fi­nal and bare­ly looked dan­ger­ous, even against an av­er­age Ja­maica side.

There's a fac­tor ex­pressed time and time again by Hart, which may con­tribute heav­i­ly to this.

Hart says he strug­gles with the fact that many of his reg­u­lars do not play con­sis­tent­ly for their clubs out­side of the T&T Pro League.

"This is a wor­ry­ing fac­tor," he said. "Many do not play with a team, or league where you have to be com­pet­i­tive to the core; fight for se­lec­tion in every train­ing ses­sion (and) con­cen­trate for 90 min­utes, com­pete in every game for sur­vival, or to win the league...These are es­sen­tial el­e­ments of mod­ern play­ers."

"We need to ask our­selves why more of our play­ers are not play­ing in any ma­jor leagues around the world, com­pared to the T&T team of 2006, Cos­ta Ri­ca, USA and Hon­duras of 2014.

"In my opin­ion, most are not pre­pared phys­i­cal­ly or men­tal­ly to meet the de­mands and rig­ors of a full sea­son."

So what are the po­ten­tial so­lu­tions?

"Staffing needs to be im­proved up­on. Med­ical, a phys­i­cal train­er and po­ten­tial­ly an IT per­son. We need prop­er train­ing equip­ment, et cetera...heart mon­i­tors and GPS mon­i­tors are es­sen­tial for mon­i­tor­ing con­sis­tent phys­i­cal test­ing for all na­tion­al team play­ers (and po­ten­tial play­ers) and record­ed da­ta.

"Many need in­di­vid­u­alised mea­sured phys­i­cal pro­grammes. They al­so have to be con­vinced that this will vast­ly im­prove their per­son­al de­vel­op­ment."

Hart said train­ing camps are es­sen­tial.

"The on­ly way to get things right for a foot­ball team is on the field of train­ing and games...This al­lows both for in­di­vid­ual and team eval­u­a­tion."

Asked if he be­lieved Fi­fa in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dows for 2015 would be ful­ly utilised, Hart said: "I have to be­lieve? this to be true. Fi­fa dates are now dou­ble dates.

"Fi­nan­cial­ly we may not be able to play two games on every out­ing be­cause trav­el is ex­ten­sive and ex­pen­sive.

"Then we can play one game on the sec­ond date. This will al­low us to have prepa­ra­tion time to­geth­er in camp. We al­so need a cou­ple of camps, with In­ter­na­tion­al games, for lo­cal based play­ers (prefer­ably in the off sea­son). Al­most every ma­jor foot­balling coun­try has this struc­ture.

"Train­ing Camps are es­sen­tial; the on­ly way to get things right for a foot­ball team is on the field of train­ing and games. This al­lows for both in­di­vid­ual and team eval­u­a­tion," he said.

Hart, along with oth­er tech­ni­cal staff mem­bers, man­age­ment and men's se­nior team play­ers re­ceived their re­spec­tive ar­rears of salaries, match fees, stipends and bonus­es fol­low­ing the CFU Caribbean Cup.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­vid­ed funds in ad­vance for the use of salaries up to the 2015 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, which takes place in the Unit­ed States in Ju­ly.

Hart said this came as re­lief for him and the play­ers.

"Yes (I am re­lieved). These are pro­fes­sion­al staff and play­ers and they have the same needs and de­mands of any work­ing man...This is how they feed their fam­i­lies. We al­so have to re­alise that the op­po­si­tion are do­ing the same."

Should it have been done in the full glare of the me­dia in a cer­e­mo­ni­al-like man­ner at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter?

"?I am hap­py that an agree­ment was ful­filled," Hart re­spond­ed, adding, "Per­son­al­ly I am a pri­vate per­son...(I am) un­com­fort­able with pub­lic­i­ty (but) the sit­u­a­tion was not one that I had any con­trol over."