U-23 team was at a disadvantage - Speid

Cavalier SC technical director, Rudolph Speid, believes our national Under-23 team was at a grave disadvantage and blames the JFF technical committee for only selecting 19 and 20-year-olds to compete against 21 and 22-year-olds for the Olympic qualifiers and Pan American Games in Lima, Peru.

He also criticised the fact that the team failed to take advantage of the overage rule which allows three players over the age limit (23) to play in each team at the Pan American Games, while the other teams took full advantage of this.

"The team structure was just wrong. Our team is the youngest team there (Pan Am Games), and I think our team was the youngest in the (Olympic) qualifiers when we were trying to qualify for the Olympics. But the truth be told, most people (teams) carried 22-year- olds in the qualifiers, and there (Pan Am) they have three overage players that every team carried to use against us.

"We were playing with 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds, while the other teams were playing with 22 year olds and they had three overage people who were 25, 26. So it's not much that we were unfit but these people have players that are more experience, than we are, and when the going gets rough those people could find another gear and we couldn't find any," he assessed.

Player selection incompetence

Speid's club, Cavalier, has been the dominating force in KSAFA youth football leagues over the last five years, and he said incompetence on the part of the technical committee in regards of not selecting players based on age, was what led to the team's horrific display over the two tournaments.

"It's difficult if you don't understand youth teams. An older player, even if it is just two years older, with less talent will be able to defeat you because of experience and physicality and other things. So that is what reached us, we just didn't plan well. The players are talented but at the end of the day a slightly less talented but older player will always get out a younger talented player.

"So I think it is incompetence. I don't think that should ever happen to us or anybody.

But I think is just lack of knowledge. Everybody keep behaving like they are experts at football and it keep hurting us. But it's just incompetence overall," he said.

Four of the eight teams in the tournament took advantage of the overage rule, Panama, Mexico, Uruguay and Peru. Panama, and Peru, had three each, while Mexico and Uruguay had one player each. Jamaica, Ecuador, Argentina, and Honduras had no players over the age limit.