football hard hit

Members of the local football fraternity are really feeling far-reaching effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic. With the sport being one of the first to be brought to a screeching halt when the virus made its presence known in Barbados, Technical Director of the Barbados Football Association, Ahmed Mohamed, said that their players were holding up as best as they could.

Speaking to The Barbados Advocate this week, Mohamed explained that they were hardest hit in the national programme as two teams were readying them self for competition. “As you know, COVID-19 is a serious thing and it really and truly affects us all because we were on the last part of preparation for the Gold Cup playoff. Not only the Senior national team, but the Under-20 had qualified for the Round of 16. They were also in serious preparation for that too. So that affected us on all fronts,” he said noting that the Seniors were in the Concacaf Gold Cup and the Under-20s qualified for the playoffs in the Concacaf U-20 championship.

Although both teams could possibly lose momentum after coming off sound performances, Mohamed said that there was very little that could be done. “That is something higher than us and we can do nothing about it. The best thing we can do is to give the boys some instructions and some home training to do and we are monitoring that week-by-week and making sure that they are doing that. We are also controlling the intensity of the training that they are doing,” he said.

Noting that there are advantages and disadvantages to the situation, Mohamed is disappointed since there were no injuries nor issues in the camp so everything would have been on stream for the seniors' March 26, game at home against Guyana.

Stating that the effects were huge as no one was training on a major level and that no one was playing, Mohamed said that the programme put in place by his technical department was hit just as hard as any other across the world.

“This is a global problem and right now the most important thing is our health and to follow the guidelines the government has put in place. That is what counts. Everything else is doable when the problems with this virus are over. This is not only affecting us, but the whole world. We would like to work. We would like to be on the park. We are missing our carpet, we are missing the grass. We are footballers and we believe we belong on the field. Right now we can only do exercises and that is affecting us hugely because we would like to prepare as best as we can for everything to come,” he said. (MP)