A week since Unit­ed States-based head coach Con­stan­tine Kon­stin of­fi­cial­ly took up du­ties, the Men’s Na­tion­al Fut­sal team re­ceived some good news as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has se­cured the in­door fa­cil­i­ty at the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain (ISPS) for train­ing ses­sions in the build-up to the CON­CA­CAF Fut­sal Cham­pi­onship in Guatemala.

Pre­vi­ous­ly the team had been util­is­ing the out­door court at the TTFA Home of Foot­ball but Kon­stin be­lieves the ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty in West­moor­ings will be a def­i­nite boost to the prepa­ra­tions. And there is a good rea­son for this.

“We will be play­ing at the Do­mo Polide­porti­vo and Teodoro Pala­cios Flo­res Gym­na­si­ums in Guatemala. The floors at those fa­cil­i­ties are the same floor as the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain, so this is huge to be able to train on the same sur­face that we will be play­ing on in Guatemala,” Kon­stin told TTFA Me­dia on Mon­day.

“It will al­low us some good prac­tice time which means the boys will get some fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the sur­face. It’s ex­cel­lent to be able to have this court avail­able to the Na­tion­al Men’s Fut­sal team.”

Kon­stin has been work­ing close­ly with his staff at train­ing since ar­riv­ing from the US and is look­ing to push on with an in­tense regime over the com­ing weeks.

“The first week back from a 14-day quar­an­tine for me has been awe­some. The play­ers have been giv­ing their all. The pool of play­ers is rep­re­sent­ed by clubs like La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, De­fence Force, Po­lice and oth­ers. Our won­der­ful and hard­work­ing staff has al­ready screened over 350 play­ers in­clud­ing those in To­ba­go,” he con­tin­ued.

“I am ex­treme­ly ho­n­oured to be giv­en this po­si­tion by the TTFA to pre­pare the team for the qual­i­fiers. We are go­ing to give it our best and the prepa­ra­tions will con­tin­ue over the com­ing weeks with every­one fo­cused and pulling to­geth­er for a com­mon goal. For us to get to the World Cup in Lithua­nia we must pre­pare our team in the best pos­si­ble way to qual­i­fy out of the tour­na­ment in Guatemala,” Kon­stin added.

The TTFA al­so wish­es to ex­press its grat­i­tude to the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port of Spain for its hos­pi­tal­i­ty in pro­vid­ing ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty to the Men’s Na­tion­al Fut­sal Team.

The 16-team CON­CA­CAF group stage will take place be­tween May 3-5. Af­ter round-robin play, the first and sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers in each group will ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nals.

The quar­ter­fi­nal match­es will be played on May 7, with the four win­ners qual­i­fy­ing for the semi­fi­nals of this com­pe­ti­tion and earn­ing a spot in the FI­FA Fut­sal World Cup Lithua­nia 2021. The semi­fi­nals and fi­nal will take place on May 8 and 9, re­spec­tive­ly.

The CON­CA­CAF Fut­sal qual­i­fiers were ini­tial­ly sched­uled for May 2020, but due to the pan­dem­ic and the post­pone­ment of the FI­FA Fut­sal World Cup, the tour­na­ment was resched­uled for 2021.

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, the par­tic­i­pat­ing teams were drawn in­to qual­i­fy­ing matchups and four groups of four teams. Fol­low­ing the resched­ul­ing of the com­pe­ti­tion, the group stage T&T are in Group A along­side hosts Guatemala, Guade­loupe and Mar­tinique.

The FI­FA Fut­sal World Cup will be played from Sep­tem­ber 12 – Oc­to­ber 6, 2021.