On August 14th in LFF Kaunas training centre lots of talented young girls gathered, that have potential to appear on the list of youth national teams in the nearest future.
Head of Women football development Céderique Tulleners mentioned, that he was glad how many girls participated with such enthusiasm. In the tryouts there were 21 girl, that were selected for the U-15 national team, who will play next week in Baltic Cup in Birstonas.
Along with the ones that are on the NT list, there were 43 girls combined, born in 2006 and later that worked hard in training sessions. Céderique Tulleners shared his impressions about intensive girls curriculum and future works.
Friday curriculum started from the WU-15 squad selection. What did you emphasized to the players?
Last Friday we combined a training for a selection team of WU-15 and an open regional training for all WU-15. We already knew that there is a lot of talent in the WU-15 group and within the WU-15 training and the open regional training, this got confirmed again. The WU-15 will not be one fixed group of 20 players. We will give all players who put in their best effort the chance to at one stage show this at National team level. This means that the squad of WU-15 will be dynamic and slightly changing for each camp in order to give more girls chance to grow and develop. Every selection is a reward!
In training itself we focussed on 2 topics: Build up and playing in block.
What possible game style you see together with head coach Tatjana Veržbickaja, playing against Latvians and Estonians in this tournament?
At this stage the result is less important. We want to focus that our style will get implemented. So more football and less kicking the ball. We will start from build up, we will try to play from feet to feet and move together in block as a team in attack and defense. I don’t know Latvia and Estonia, but it is not important. We focus on our own players to help them develop in order so they hopefully can reach the Women’s A team. Our process is a long term player development process.
It will the the debut tournament for this age group representing Lithuania. What you would be your wish to the players?
First of all, have fun and do your best. If they enjoy the camp and the matches and work hard, I am sure we can achieve many things. Secondly, be proud to represent your country. Finally, work hard and be professional.
I would be delighted to see players work hard, do their best and have fun. In this way we can focus on the positive things and grow the players and the team.
Have you been surprised by the number of participating girls in the open training session?
I was very surprised. Before I always heard that football is not popular with girls in Lithuania. But only in one age group many girls (more than 60 in total) came from across the country to participate. The best of all, they were doing their best and very motivated. And we haven’t seen them all yet!
Why it‘s worth to attend these open trainings for those girls, who haven‘t participated yet, and for those who already participated?
It’s good for the girls to show themselves to other coaches. It’s interesting to get information in a different way from different coaches. Also it’s beneficial to play with other players than their team mates.
When, in the near future, the girls can join the open sessions?
We currently are working on mapping the number of players to see which regions we will most suitable to organise the regional trainings. We are planning to start with the Regional open sessions in september again.
Interviewed by Robertas Každanas / lff.lt
