BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
THE Country’s men’s national football team head coach Felipe Vega Arango’s objective is to ensure all players remained and are committed to their training if they want to represent the country in the best possible at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Dubai.
Solomon Islands are pooled with Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and the winner of Tonga and the Cook Islands in the race for the next year’s Oceania Preliminary Playoffs for the World Cup.
“I don’t want players to back to the village, simple. The priority is the national team the commitment is the national team. This is a world cup qualifying match and we represent a nation and I believe it is extremely important for us to represent the nation in the best way possible.
“To be honest with you all the teams are difficult, all the games are difficult. This is a world cup qualifying match, everybody wants to win, everybody going to prepare well,” he said during a press conference.
He believes at this moment all the teams have the same problem because of the pandemic.
“I believe all the teams have the same problem because of the pandemic a lot of people have not played any matches, the only team that plays matches right now is NZ because they have overseas players.
“So everybody going to start very much in the same place and we do not have too much time to prepare. This is very little time because we have holidays is coming up and also the riot last week.
“We didn’t have too much because we were supposed to start our training camp last week, but we miss a few really beautiful days of training,” he stated. Saying that the most important thing is that the country has stability and everybody is happy, supporting each other and I think the nation needs that at the moment.
“Speaking about football we don’t have too much time to prepare. We need to practice as much time as possible,” he told the media.
The Spaniard said that players need to have full commitments to a national team, no village competitions as they need to practice, practice and practice.
“We will try as hard as possible to have a competitive team. Like I said we don’t have too much time and the competition is mid-March with traveling and with the few days that we could miss we don’t have two full months of training so we need to prepare hard, everybody needs to work hard and I hope everything goes accordingly,” he added.
He told the sports journalist that for now, the training squad has 25 field players and four goalkeepers that’s 29 and they are waiting for the confirmation for OFC and FIFA for the required number of players.
“In the past, the requirements were three goalkeepers and 20 field players. Now with the COVID19 situation, the same thing that happened in the Euro-cup, FIFA allowed a few more players to travel in case that would have some kind of problem.
“So I don’t know yet the answer to the question, to be honest with you I would like to know soon because I want to stick to the players that are going to make a team.
“We will practice every day that is Saturday and Sunday and is going to be a competition between them. They are competing because 25 field players are impossible to go, at least three players are going to be left out and as soon as I have the finalist I made it known to you.
“To keep the country happy, to keep the country unified and to show to the people that as a nation that we can do things together so the players have a big responsibility and nobody can go to the village to play village competition they must stay with the team,” he said.
