De­spite ar­riv­ing in Spain on Mon­day morn­ing, the T&T Se­nior Men’s foot­ball team is yet to get in a train­ing ses­sion ahead of the Friend­ly In­ter­na­tion­al ver­sus the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates sched­uled for to­mor­row in Girona.

Coach Den­nis Lawrence and his men were sched­uled to hit the train­ing pitch in Barcelona on the af­ter­noon of their ar­rival but de­spite promis­es from the match agent this nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. The sit­u­a­tion wors­ens yes­ter­day with play­ers and staff await­ing con­fir­ma­tion of their six o’clock ses­sion in Girona. At 5:45 pm there was no word from the rep­re­sen­ta­tive as­signed to the team or his col­leagues.

The coach was ob­vi­ous­ly not pleased. “At the mo­ment I have to say it has been very very dis­ap­point­ing for all the ef­forts we have made to come over here and be well pre­pared. We ap­proached the TTFA to fund us be­ing here an ex­tra day just in terms of our prepa­ra­tion and at the mo­ment it has just gone all to waste be­cause of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the UAE. I am dis­ap­point­ed for the play­ers, I dis­ap­point­ed for foot­ball.”

TTFA Pres­i­dent David John Williams is in con­tin­u­ous con­tact with Lawrence and has reached out the UAE to solve the prob­lem.

“I am ful­ly aware of the sit­u­a­tion in Spain as I was up­dat­ed by coach Den­nis and man­ag­er Richard Piper. They have our full sup­port from this end and we are con­fi­dent they will make the right de­ci­sions to pro­tect our in­tegri­ty” John-Williams said.

“The con­tract with the UAE catered to all the team’s train­ing re­quire­ments and we will con­tin­ue li­ais­ing with them to iron out these is­sues” the pres­i­dent con­clud­ed.

Lawrence al­so touched on those con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments “We were re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to come over here and ful­fil this fix­ture, play­ers came over in good spir­its and now we get to this sit­u­a­tion where things con­trac­tu­al­ly agreed to were not pro­vid­ed by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the UAE, be­cause I don’t be­lieve it's the UAE Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion it­self, I be­lieve it’s the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the match agent, those are the ones that got every­thing wrong in terms of no bus turn­ing up for our train­ing ses­sions and no pitch­es arranged.”