Na­tion­al se­nior men's foot­ball coach An­gus Eve will have his hands full over the com­ing months, hav­ing been tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of prepar­ing both the coun­try's Un­der-20 and se­nior men's teams.

Screen­ing ses­sions for the U-20s be­gan on Sat­ur­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, and from some 400 reg­is­tered play­ers, Eve worked with on­ly 100, hav­ing to ad­here to the COVID-19 pro­to­col and en­sure safe­ty.

Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Dion La Fou­cade has been work­ing along­side Eve and his staff to as­sess and se­lect play­ers ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Qual­i­fiers, mid-next year.

Be­cause of the need to fol­low the COVID-19 pro­to­col, Eve and his staff have had to con­duct their ses­sions in al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der, on Sat­ur­day work­ing with play­ers with sur­names that be­gin with A, B, C and D. And on De­cem­ber 18, he will work with play­ers with last names be­gin­ning with E to K from 8 am.

Screen­ing ses­sions will con­tin­ue on De­cem­ber 21 for play­ers with sur­names be­gin­ning with L to W from 9 am at the Cou­va venue. But the ques­tion is whether Eve will be able to han­dle the work­load, with the na­tion­al se­nior team train­ing ex­pect­ed to re­sume in Jan­u­ary.

Train­ing for the se­nior team was stopped more than a month ago for two main rea­sons, one is the un­avail­abil­i­ty of con­tracts to staff mem­bers which is in the process of be­ing sort­ed out, Guardian Me­dia Sports has been re­li­ably in­formed, and the oth­er is be­cause the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which is man­ag­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is strate­gi­cal­ly plan­ning a pro­gramme for foot­ball for next year, ac­cord­ing to Amiel Mo­hammed, TTFA's gen­er­al sec­re­tary.

Mo­hammed said: "It's more sit­ting down and analysing the strate­gic plan ahead, es­pe­cial­ly from a fi­nan­cial point of view. And then once we know we've come out with some­thing, then if it's sus­tain­able over a pe­ri­od of time, rather through­out 2022.

"We know that the TTFA re­cent­ly ac­ti­vat­ed the bank­rupt­cy and in­sol­ven­cy process and then at the same time we've been do­ing a re­view of how things look for 2022. It's pro­ject­ed to be a very busy cal­en­dar."

Eve, on Sat­ur­day did not an­swer his cell phone, but La Fou­cade said the coach, con­sid­ered one of the bet­ter youth coach­es in the coun­try, will have to man­age his time wise­ly to cope with both teams.

Guardian Me­dia Sports has been told that a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es have been planned for the se­nior team next year, as the team pre­pares for the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League.

With the U-20s, Eve is al­so sched­uled to have a ses­sion for play­ers re­turn­ing home from abroad for the Christ­mas hol­i­days on De­cem­ber 27, and will al­so have to work with play­ers from the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go at a date to be de­ter­mined.

Eve is al­so set to leave lo­cal shores, ei­ther at the end of Feb­ru­ary or ear­ly March next year, to con­duct a se­ries of over­seas screen­ings for in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers.