Tunisia Becomes 1st Country to Resume Football Training
Tunisia’s football federation (FTF) says its national squad will gather for training later this month, with this move they will become the first team in African and the World to do so since the Coronavirus outbreak. The Carthage Eagles will assemble for the first time since November after their 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in March were called off because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tunisia was among the first African countries to shutdown all sporting activities in thier country because of the coronavirus pandemic, the FTF says the training camp will be split into two stages in line with safety protocol. Tunisia head coach Mondher Kebaier said: “Many players came to Tunisia in March and were left with no official training.”
He also said: “We wanted to seize this opportunity to set up a two stage training camp for the national team to get the players in the best physical and tactical shape.” “We want our players to be prepared both physically and mentally. We haven’t seen them together since November 2019 so it’s crucial that when the activities resume, we are well prepared on every aspect,” Kebaier added.
He revealed that the first stage of the training camp will be between 8-13 June and it will be limited to 13 players because of quarantine measures and will include the likes of Al Shabab’s Farouk Ben Mustapha and Etoile du Sahel’s Mohamed Amine Ben Amor.
13 more players will join the squad on 16 June with Taha Yassine Khenissi of Esperance amongst those attending. Kebaier said: “We can have full sized training sessions as of 14 June, as per the recommendations of Tunisian authorities.”
Tunisia are currently topping their 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying group with two wins from two games played. Their World Cup group qualifiers are scheduled to begin in October 2020 and they are not willing to joke with both qualifier’s games. The FTF said it had been working on plans for the safe resumption of training for some time.
“The decision wasn’t random. We’ve been working throughout this pandemic to devise a plan to resume football activities,” Hichem Ben Omrane, head of Tunisia’s national teams committee told news man. thay also said: “We have collaborated with a number of established doctors in the country and came up with a thorough guideline on how to do that.” “Once we got the green light from the authorities, it was time to implement what we put together. We want our players to be ready.”