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Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Abu Bakr looks ahead to Wales en­counter

Training resumes for national footballers

by

SPORTS DESK
2189 days ago
20190307
Radanfah Abu Bakr is in current provisional national football squad.

Radanfah Abu Bakr is in current provisional national football squad.

T&T’s se­nior men’s foot­ballers were back on the train­ing pitch on Ash Wednes­day ahead of the March 20 In­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Wales at the Race­course Ground in Wrex­ham.

Head coach Den­nis Lawrence will have just about nine ses­sions at home again be­fore the squad as­sem­bles in Wrex­ham for the en­counter and the for­mer Ever­ton as­sis­tant coach is ex­pect­ed to name his fi­nal squad next week pri­or.

Wales head coach Ryan Gig­gs will name his squad in nine days and a BBC re­port stat­ed he is con­sid­er­ing call­ing up Rother­ham mid­field­er Will Vaulks for his first Wales ap­pear­ance.

Gig­gs was at the New York Sta­di­um on Sat­ur­day as Vaulks im­pressed in Rother­ham’s 3-2 win over Black­burn. Vaulks, 25, was born on the Wirral and played for Tran­mere and Work­ing­ton be­fore join­ing Falkirk in 2013. Gig­gs is no stranger in bring­ing in new play­ers out of the blue, with An­der­lecht cen­tre-back James Lawrence re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered to have Welsh roots.

One of the play­ers in Lawrence’s cur­rent pro­vi­sion­al squad is for­mer Dan­ish-based de­fend­er Radan­fah Abu Bakr who spoke about the im­por­tance of the up­com­ing fix­ture ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. Abu Bakr has played in the past two Gold Cups in 2013 and 2015.

"It’s al­ways good to be back, com­ing off a bit of a lay-off. It’s good to be back out on the pitch again and play­ing among the boys. It’s been very in­tense so far and very phys­i­cal," Abu Bakr said yes­ter­day.

"We have a big game to pre­pare for. It’s go­ing to be a mas­sive test for us and a big chal­lenge. We have been work­ing hard in the ses­sions try­ing to get up to speed phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly and tac­ti­cal­ly as well.

"We had the last cou­ple days off but we’ve been work­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ly and when we come to the ses­sions it’s a huge col­lec­tive ef­fort to get the right mind­set and tac­tics for the game com­ing up. It’s been very in­tense be­cause that’s how it’s go­ing to be game-day against top qual­i­ty op­po­si­tion. But we’ve been fo­cused on what he (Lawrence) has been try­ing to in­stil in us tac­ti­cal­ly and of course get­ting the right men­tal­i­ty when we play."

The for­mer Cale­do­nia AIA play­er stressed that the Wales en­counter is a crit­i­cal one ahead of a hec­tic pe­ri­od of ac­tiv­i­ties for the se­nior men’s team with the Gold Cup ap­proach­ing in June fol­lowed by the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League lat­er in the year.

"The most im­por­tant thing will be us to stay dis­ci­plined through­out the game. Quite a few of our boys are in off sea­son so that’s go­ing to be a bit of a chal­lenge which means we will have to stay very fo­cused dur­ing the game, very dis­ci­plined tac­ti­cal­ly and work to­geth­er as a team," said Abu Bakr, who un­der­stands the im­por­tance of stay­ing dis­ci­plined through­out the match be­ing key to a good re­sult against Gig­gs’ men.


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