Former Ba striker Osea Vakatalesau will not be travelling with the Fiji Football men’s team to Vanuatu tomorrow.
Team director Tarunesh Reddy confirmed Vakatalesau will not be travelling with the team to Vanuatu due to injury.
“Osea has told us that he needs to recover from his injury and that he won’t be part of the team.
“Our agreement was that he joins the team from Vanuatu with Roy Krishna,” Reddy said.
“We will not be getting in replacement players but we have a squad and will take 18 players.”
Team coach Frank Farina said the team has been training for two weeks now and have been playing warm up matches against Lautoka and Nadi.
“We’ve just played Lautoka and. Nadi for the warm up matches a just the local club sides here and between ourselves when we had 26 or 28 players in here.
“It’s been a good sort of preparation camp for us.
“I think it’s more about our structure the way we play with our formation we can always improve on that,” Farina said.
Farina said the team has responded positively to the new playing format.
“I’ve just introduced the new formation of playing so they’ve been getting used to that.
“We’ve got a mixture of Under-23’s and national team players.
“That’s the goal to try and bring some of our young players ,you can’t go without experienced players like Alvin Singh, Avinesh Swami but it’s good to have a sprinkling of new players as well.”
Roy Krishna will be joining the team in Vanuatu and will only play the second game on November 10 due to club commitments.
“We have a lot of quick players that are good on the ball in tough situations. “Defensively we will do well and I’m pleased with the boys’ fitness,” Farina said.