Paul De­cle, coach of the coun­try’s High-Per­for­mance girls’ foot­ball team, which is made up of 12 and 13-year-olds, was in high praise for his charges af­ter their dis­play in League B of the 2024 Con­ca­caf Un­der-15 De­vel­op­ment Cham­pi­onships Pro­gramme which start­ed last week and ends Sun­day (Au­gust 11).

In to­day’s fi­nal, the Do­mini­ca Re­pub­lic will take on Hon­duras from 11 am at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, while T&T will face Guatemala two hours ear­li­er in the third-place match at the same venue.

De­cle asked about his views on the tour­na­ment said the re­al bonus was get­ting 36 play­ers from the high-per­for­mance cen­tre ex­posed, not­ing it would en­cour­age the girls to stay in the game, work hard and strive to play for the na­tion­al teams go­ing for­ward.

The T&T girls were pipped by Guatemala 1-0 on Wednes­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, which was their on­ly loss of the tour­na­ment. The coun­try’s U-15 team, on the oth­er hand, clob­bered Grena­da 5-0 for a place in the semi­fi­nals on Fri­day. In that match, the home team went down by a sim­i­lar 1-0 mar­gin to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic to miss out on a place in the ti­tle match, how­ev­er, they will play for the bronze medal against Guatemala.

De­cle said the play­ers’ will­ing­ness to com­pete, cou­pled with their fight­ing spir­it will on­ly auger well for his team mov­ing for­ward.

De­cle, who has been work­ing with the young tal­ent at the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) High-Per­for­mance Pro­gramme, made the dis­tinc­tion be­tween the teams, say­ing the U-15 na­tion­al team is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the U-14 girls’ team that played at the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Tour­na­ment last year, while the high-per­for­mance team com­pris­es of play­ers they would have picked up along the way and brought in­to the pro­gramme to help them grow.

He said there is a des­per­ate need to grow the play­ers’ pool in women’s foot­ball in T&T, as it will ex­pose the se­lec­tors to more op­tions when it comes to play­er se­lec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to De­cle, two play­ers from the high-per­for­mance team have al­ready been iden­ti­fied to work with the na­tion­al team.

The play­ers from both teams will be used to se­lect the coun­try’s U-17 team for the up­com­ing CON­CA­CAF U-17 Cham­pi­onships.