Poletti 
Pararoos coach Kai Lammert during a game against the USA at Cromer Park. Photo supplied by Football Australia
Pararoos coach Kai Lammert has selected his 14-player squad for the sides upcoming IFCPF World Cup in Salou, Spain, which begins against the USA next Monday at 7:30pm AEDT.
Lammert has opted for a mix of veteran experience with a very youthful squad, and will be relying heavily on captain David Barber and Ben Roche, who is coming out of retirement, to help guide the team throughout the tournament.
“I’ve picked the best players, and when they happen to be young, that’s ok,” Lammert said.
“I can’t make them older so for me it’s not [that] we deliberately picked a young team. It just happens to be that this is right now the best squad we have available.
“We played old against young and did a penalty shootout the other day and if you have a 21-year-old in the old team, then you know you have a young team,” Lammert said with a chuckle.
He said the process of selecting the squad was a long one, taking many factors into account, including injuries, players commitments around work and family, as well as player classification, which also includes potential re-classification throughout the tournament, a new rule introduced by the International Federation of Cerebral Palsy Football (IFCPF) in 2023.
The classification process is a three-stage process, which includes a physical, technical, and an observation assessment, and places players into one of three categories, FT1, FT2, or FT3.
The IFCPF says that the classification system aims at ensuring fairness with regard to the impact of impairment between both teams.
With CP Football being a seven-a-side game, each team has to have one FT1 player on the field at all times and is not allowed to have more than one FT3 players on the field.
Lammert said that is one of the hardest factors which impacts squad selection, and a big difference compared to other national teams.
“We not only have to look at ourselves and the way we want to play and how the opponents react to it and analyse opponents, we also have to see [if] some curve balls that get thrown to us with classification and changes around that,” he said.
As a coach, he said he stopped expecting anything as it relates to classification and the process, and shifted to planning for everything that could go right or wrong.
Lammert said there is also a heavy focus on player welfare around the process, with the National Men’s Wellbeing Officer for Football Australia Chris Lynch providing support.
“[The classification process] has a major impact for the person that does get re-classified,” Lammert said.
“If they get a worse [classification], that has a major impact and we tend to stay together and focus on that first. After that you can think about other steps.”
65-cap veteran Ben Roche is coming out of retirement for this tournament, which presents an interesting scenario, as he is also the Para Teams Manager for both the Pararoos and the ParaMatildas, a role he was appointed to earlier this year.
Lammert said the conversation with Roche was interesting.
“He said ‘have you thought about me?’ and I said ‘well, yeah.’,” Lammert said with another chuckle.
“But it was more around ‘do you want to?, where’s your headspace?,’ and he said ‘I’m as keen as ever.’
“After the injury to Connor Bunce, we needed another attacking option as well.
“Like Barbs (David Barber), for Benny, it’s the team comes first to him and he showed that again. This was not a decision necessarily about him. He said ‘how can I help the team?’
“He’s our team manager and he’s doing great things there now and promoting our game in the past, and again, it’s just another step that shows what an incredible human he is.
“He will help us, there’s absolutely no doubt, on the pitch, off the pitch, he will definitely help us.”
With the team soon departing for Spain, Lammert had one message for the Australian public ahead of the tournament.
“Come and watch the games. If you have some spare cash, come to Spain, but if you don’t, it’s free on the [Football Australia] YouTube channel, [and] all games are live and you can even watch them back, but the times are pretty good [with] mostly evening games.
“Come and watch the boys. They deserve every [bit of] support we can give.”
The Squad
Rafferty Bacon (1 cap), David Barber (captain, 111 caps), Christian Bitsikas (2 caps), Jeremy Boyce (10 caps), Daniel Campbell (24 caps), Giacomo Izzo (0 caps), Luc Launder (5 caps), Alessandro La Verghetta (17 caps), Taj Lynch (21 caps), William McGrath (0 caps), Augustine Murphy (19 caps), Ben Roche (65 caps), Christian Tsangas (6 caps), Kaylan Van Heer (6 caps)