Visa and oth­er prob­lems are pos­ing ma­jor con­cerns for Na­tion­al foot­ball coach Den­nis Lawrence, ahead of two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es against Japan (June 5) and Cana­da (June 10), and the start of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States, Ja­maica and Mex­i­co in June.

At a press brief­ing on Mon­day, the coach gave an up­date on the team at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, when he said a num­ber of play­ers are await­ing their visas, or wait­ing for in­ter­views for their visas, and among them- Aubrey David, the De­porti­vo Sapris­sa/Cos­ta Ri­ca de­fend­er who has been un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of his visa ap­pli­ca­tion in March, mid­field­ers Ataulla Guer­ra (Charleston Bat­tery/USA) and Jo­evin Jones (Seat­tle Sounders/USA), who it is hoped will get it in time for the Gold Cup.

Al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing visa is­sues are strik­ers Willis Plaza (Churchill Broth­ers/In­dia) and Mar­cus Joseph (W Con­nec­tion), while Run­dell Win­ches­ter, the Plas­tense FC for­ward has asked for time off to deal with an is­sue with his son. Lawrence made it clear that in­stru­men­tal de­fend­er Shel­don Bateau (Sarps­borg/Nor­way) will al­so be out for the friend­lies and the Gold Cup, and phys­io­ther­a­pist Dave Isaac, who has been to the US four times in the past few months, but is al­so await­ing an in­ter­view to re­ceive his visa since he ap­plied for it in March.

The set-backs Lawrence said arose from a sud­den change in the process for ap­ply­ing for the visas.

How­ev­er, there are spec­tu­la­tions that the present chal­lenge maybe as a con­se­quence of the war-of-words be­tween T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams and Chargé d'Af­faires of the US Em­bassy John Mc In­tyre over visas for T&T Girls U-15 foot­ball team to play in the US last year at a CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­onships.

Lawrence, an ex-na­tion­al de­fend­er turn coach, said he was al­so dis­ap­point­ed with the at­ti­tude of some of the play­ers in the TT camp, for which he has had to be stern. All this he said leads to a weak­ened TT team ahead of the Gold Cup.

Ac­cord­ing to Lawrence "The idea was to try to get the Gold Cup team to Japan. We have had a few is­sues with this in terms of the new US visa sys­tem, where we have a cou­ple staff mem­bers and play­ers still await­ing visas, and this has ham­pered some of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing in terms of the squad go­ing to Japan. I can al­so con­firm that Shel­don Bateau will not be avail­able for se­lec­tion for per­son­al rea­sons with re­gards to com­mit­ments he made with this club."

Due to the set­backs, Lawrence said he has had to make ma­jor ad­just­ments- "Apart from that the ones who are here have been work­ing well, work­ing hard, I still think we are a bit short in at­tack but we have been try­ing to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem."

Lawrence's prob­lems will open the door for a num­ber of play­ers to vie for first-team se­lec­tion, such as Justin Gar­cia (un­at­tached), Cur­tis Gon­za­les (De­fence Force), Ka­reem Moses (FC Ed­mon­ton/Cana­da), Le­land Archer (Charleston Bat­tery/USA).

Lawrence has un­til June 3rd to sub­mit his full team for the Gold Cup, but in the mean­time he will take 19 play­ers to Japan, with the hope of hav­ing more of his top play­ers for the Gold Cup, as he does not want to car­ry play­ers who can­not make it on the Gold Cup team.

The War­riors will open their Gold Cup cam­paign against Pana­ma on June 18, be­fore meet­ing host USA and then Guyana for the right to be among the top two to progress from the group.