Seychelles national team head coach Ralph Jean-Louis has admitted that his team hasn’t prepared well ahead of their World Cup Qualifiers against Ivory Coast and Kenya.
Seychelles finds themselves in Group F alongside Kenya, Gabon, The Gambia, Burundi, and Ivory Coast and according to Louis, their concentration is to prepare a team for future assignments.
“Our preparation was not ideal considering we had planned a specific preparation for this very tough game. First we couldn’t have all the players we had selected for various reasons so we will not have the team we initially had in mind.
“Then, since the national club competitions are still being played at the moment we had to release the players to their clubs and we weren’t able to set out a convenient preparation program for the game against Ivory Coast. So altogether there was only a few days where we could get the team together for training,” the tactician is quoted by the Seychelles’ Football Federation.
With the disarray in preparation, the coach admitted that their aim for the qualification had changed.
“Since we didn’t prepare as planned our objectives for this match have changed. We will have a test match on Sunday to get a clear picture and adjust our objectives but I can already say that we will set objectives on all aspects of the game like scoring at least one goal, achieve a good physical performance by covering a certain amount of kilometers during the match or technically to achieve a certain number of passes,” he added.
Asked about his philosophy, he added:” First of all, I have to explain that I, along with the technical department, are only in charge of the national team for the coming two games. A new national coach should be appointed after these games.
“Regarding the technical department’s and my own vision for Seychelles football, we are in line with the federation’s objectives. We want to prepare Seychelles for the future and give some international experience to young players with the objective of performing well in the next Indian Ocean Games.”
