PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name – Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Suri­name Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, Bri­an Tevre­den has crit­i­cised in­ter­na­tion­al clubs for not al­low­ing Suri­namese play­ers to re­turn home for na­tion­al du­ty.

With Suri­name set to play Cana­da next Fri­day at the Franklin Essed Sta­di­um in the first leg of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nals, Tevre­den said Suri­name was not field­ing its best team due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of some pro­fes­sion­al play­ers.

“It is time that pro­fes­sion­al clubs take us se­ri­ous­ly when we call on in­ter­na­tion­als to play for the na­tion­al team.

“The out­side world has no idea how in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult and com­pli­cat­ed it can be to get play­ers from Eu­rope to Suri­name,” Tevre­den said dur­ing a re­cent press con­fer­ence.

“I get phone calls from in­ter­na­tion­als that they are be­ing put un­der heavy pres­sure not to go to Suri­name, that they are be­ing threat­ened with los­ing their start­ing po­si­tion at the club.

“Then clubs start to ar­gue with the FI­FA rules. Well, I hap­pen to know those rules too and dur­ing the FI­FA win­dows, clubs are oblig­ed to re­lease their play­ers, of course in good con­sul­ta­tion.

“Like at FC Gronin­gen, where goal­keep­er Eti­enne Vaessen is un­der con­tract, or Spar­ta where de­fend­er Djeven­cio van de Kust plays. They are very pos­i­tive there, but I al­so know of cas­es where the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor asks a play­er whether he is go­ing on hol­i­day to Suri­name again,” he added.

Head coach Stan­ley Men­zo said he was al­so an­noyed by the at­ti­tude of some em­ploy­ers.

“Clubs ap­par­ent­ly still re­gard Suri­name as a B or even C coun­try. That has to stop,” Men­zo said.

CMC