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All eyes are on the national basketball selection as they prepare to participate in next week’s COCABA Tournament in Cancun. But what you probably didn’t know is that our football selection has been quietly training for its own international match next week. It won’t be for a tournament but it could win us desperately needed points. We visited training camp today.

Keith Swift Reporting,
This is the rebuilt national football selection in action. It is a work in progress and since Monday they’ve been training at FFB Headquarters in Belmopan. Originally they were preparing to battle Bolivia next week but FFB President Bertie Chimilio says there was a last minute change in plans.

Dr. Bertie Chimilio, FFB President
“We have to play and that has been the complaint, nobody plays us. So now this team we are rebuilding in the hope of having the Nation’s Cup in 2011 and the World Cup in 2012. However for this 12th of August we were initially successful in getting a game between Belize and Bolivia and everything was working good up to last night. I received a call about one o’clock this morning saying that the Bolivians could not put their team together and that they didn’t want to play us with a second rate team because they’ve not been doing good in South America so they wanted to meet us with a strong team.”

So now the team will battle Guatemala. The team is training under their new coach – Mexican-Belizean Renan Cowo.

Renan Couoh Esrobedo – coach
“The aim of the FFB here in Belize is to refurbish the entire selection and they are working with different age groups to form a good selection to play international games. First when we started, some guys were giving trouble but this crowd is very good and it’s performing very good.”

Dr. Bertie Chimilio,
“The team we had last year was very young so we have a quite a number of the guys back. We would have wanted to have more but there are some with in-discipline and there are some who just don’t want to come back and do the hard work. So for that we incorporated new players and that is what this process is doing. Like I said we always plan ahead of time. We don’t wait last minute and put a selection together. Our goal is 2011.”

Belize is ranked 177 out of 208 countries. The game on Wednesday against Guatemala will be played in Peten.