The T&T Un­der-14 Boys team is ex­pect­ed to en­ter the 2024 Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Boys U-14 Chal­lenge Se­ries with as­pi­ra­tions and ex­cite­ment when the tour­na­ment kicks off at home here in T&T from Au­gust 16-25.

Teams from 24 Caribbean na­tions will as­sem­ble in the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic from around Au­gust 14. The home team will play its group phase at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go against re­gion­al ri­val Ja­maica, Mar­tinique, St Kitts & Nevis and Aru­ba.

The team is be­ing coached by for­mer 2006 World Cup mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald, who for years, has been over­see­ing the prepa­ra­tions of the U-14 pro­gramme, which emerged from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's High Per­for­mance pro­gramme.

“First and fore­most I have to say that I am grate­ful and I feel ho­n­oured to be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty placed on my shoul­ders to lead this high per­for­mance un­der 14 boys group,” Theobald said.

“The High Per­for­mance pro­gramme has giv­en be a plat­form as a young, as­pir­ing coach to con­tin­ue to grow and de­vel­op. But more im­por­tant­ly, it is al­low­ing me that op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass on my knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence and to play a part in nur­tur­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al play­ers here.

“I think we have a good group of play­ers. These are young play­ers who have a de­sire to learn and de­vel­op and they are al­ways ea­ger for every op­por­tu­ni­ty. The op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to play in an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment at home is a mas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence they are all look­ing for­ward to."

Ac­cord­ing to Theobald: “We have been train­ing for quite some time dur­ing the pro­gramme and the boys are rel­ish­ing the chance to test them­selves against play­ers from oth­er coun­tries. We’ve got a good group that will be com­pet­i­tive. They have all sac­ri­ficed a lot along with their fam­i­lies to get to this point.”

The for­mer T&T cap­tain al­so em­pha­sised that both he and his play­ers are in a de­vel­op­ment phase.

“We al­ways want bet­ter as coach­es and staff and there­fore I will tell you that we have to con­tin­ue work­ing and de­vel­op­ing, but this tour­na­ment will pro­vide a prop­er mea­sur­ing stick for us. We will see where we need to im­prove as a team and where the play­ers them­selves al­so need to keep work­ing on ar­eas of their game that need im­prove­ment,” Theobald added.

The squad is ex­pect­ed to go in­to a res­i­den­tial train­ing camp in Cou­va next week be­fore shift­ing base to the sis­ter isle, ahead of its open­ing match on Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 17 against Aru­ba at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um.