Coach Tom Saintfiet: ‘It wasn’t easy to announced final 28-man squad’

“It was never an easy decision to drop players from the 40-man provisional squad because we always have to look in the future and as a coach and staff, you never know what is going to happen in the tournament,” said Tom Saintfiet during an interview with Lamin Fadera.

Tom Saintfiet recently announced his final 28-man squad from the previous 40-man provisional squad for next month Afcon tournament in Cameroon. 

He added that they made the decision based on their opponents, adding that things such as injuries, red cards and yellow cards could also happen.

He further said: “We need alternatives for every position and naturally we also need to think about the group that stayed longer together. It has to be the right, cohesive and dynamic group and lastly we look into players that were very important in the qualification process and we wanted to reward them to be part of the group of 28-man squad.” 

According to him, everyone who is in the selection deserve to be selected, noting that naturally there are some players who are not in the selection who could also be in the selection “but the group is limited to 28 so we have to make choices.”

“We are still busy with preparations because it is always difficult to have the funds to prepare training camps, flights and everything. We have been working for 8 months on that and we are still waiting for confirmation and I am very positive that everything will be fine by Monday when we are flying to start our training camp,” says the Belgian Coach.