T&T na­tion­al Un­der-17 men’s foot­ball team coach Ran­dolph Boyce has named a 23-man squad to face Pe­ru in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es in the cap­i­tal, Li­ma, sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 28 and 30.

The match­es will form a key part of the team’s on­go­ing prepa­ra­tions for the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Men’s Qual­i­fiers, which kick off in T&T on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, in which the host coun­try will meet Bar­ba­dos, Saint Mar­tin, Sint Maarten and favourites Mex­i­co in their Group A match­es, from which on­ly the group win­ner will ad­vance to the FI­FA Un­der-17 World Cup to be held in Qatar in No­vem­ber.

Among the no­table ab­sen­tees are the UK-based trio of Read­ing FC’s Kay­den Bancey, Crys­tal Palace Un­der-15 play­er Jashaun Christ­mas and Brighton and Hove Al­bion’s Tate Or­monde, who all par­tic­i­pat­ed in a train­ing ses­sion over the Christ­mas hol­i­days last De­cem­ber.

Speak­ing on the se­lec­tion of his team and their prepa­ra­tions so far for the friend­lies, Boyce, al­so the coach of St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, said, “So far, things have gone well. We cut the squad; we come down to just the fi­nal cut af­ter this game to­day, and so far the boys have been re­al­ly putting in the work and lis­ten­ing to de­tail.

He added, “Ob­vi­ous­ly we want them to be a lit­tle more metic­u­lous in terms of ap­pli­ca­tions and stuff that we would want done, but it takes a lit­tle time, but we be­lieve with the three weeks’ time we should get it done by that time.

With re­spect to the friend­ly en­coun­ters against Pe­ru, Boyce said it will help their over­all prepa­ra­tions a lot, as they would be able to test them­selves against an in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­nent.

“What we have been do­ing is most­ly play­ing above the age group, so this will save us ex­cel­lent­ly go­ing in­to play­ing our Un­der-17 team in the same age group and see­ing how they ap­proach it, if they would be more ag­gres­sive, more pa­tient, or more dis­ci­plined in terms of the four mo­ments of the game that we would want them to ap­ply cer­tain things that we asked of them, so it would be def­i­nite­ly.” The guys are like sponges; they are kind of soak­ing it up, and they want to learn, and that is the most im­por­tant thing when you are deal­ing with this age group in terms of them want­i­ng to learn and then in terms of the ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly I would have liked a lit­tle more ma­tu­ri­ty in terms of ex­e­cu­tion, but again, rep­e­ti­tion – we hope in rep­e­ti­tion we take care of that in terms of the reps we have giv­en them in terms of do­ing it over and over and over, and ac­tu­al­ly we have seen the ben­e­fits of it.

He added, “We would have want­ed to come a lit­tle faster, but we hope we should have the time to get it done.”

The T&T coach al­so praised the lo­cal fed­er­a­tion for get­ting the match­es, say­ing the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion has done tremen­dous­ly well in terms of sup­port­ing us and giv­ing us that op­por­tu­ni­ty to go and play these two games.

T&T Un­der-17 team

Goal­keep­ers: Necose Moore, Levi Williams, Mikhail Clement

De­fend­ers: Adiel Fau­re, Rea­gan Rowe, Jay­lon Roberts, Je­re­mi­ah Daniel, Ke­nai Richard­son, Se­bastien James, Akel Vesprey, An­to­nio Hills.

Mid­field­ers: An­tu­an Loui­son, Ja­sai Theophilus, Je­re­mai Nan­ton, Je­lani Stoute, Jay­lon Forbes, Finn De Fre­itas, Dono­van Dray­ton, Daniel Lewis, Adasa Richard­son.

For­wards: Kanye Glas­gow, Nadeem Grant, J’Meke Watkins