There is al­ways a dif­fer­ent feel­ing when the com­pet­i­tive games in foot­ball come around. And there is cer­tain­ly some­thing dif­fer­ent about the up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow.

The friend­lies serve a pur­pose and coach­es need them as they pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to try play­ers, give younger play­ers min­utes and work on dif­fer­ent ideas with­out the same con­se­quences at­tached to the re­sult.

But once the Na­tions League be­gins, all of that changes. Every se­lec­tion, every mis­take and every point car­ries a bit more weight.

The up­com­ing Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber win­dow should tell us quite a lot about the Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball team.

T&T open away to Haiti at Sabi­na Park in Ja­maica on Sep­tem­ber 24, fol­lowed by the home match against Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Sep­tem­ber 27. From there, the team trav­els to Willem­stad to face Cu­raçao on Oc­to­ber 1 be­fore re­turn­ing home to meet Cu­raçao again on Oc­to­ber 4.

That is four com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­als in the space of 11 days, which by it­self makes this a very un­usu­al as­sign­ment for a se­nior na­tion­al team.

One of the clos­est com­par­isons I could find came in June 2001 when T&T played Hon­duras on June 16, the Unit­ed States on June 19 in Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers as well as friend­lies ver­sus Pana­ma on June 10 and Bermu­da on June 24. That was four se­nior in­ter­na­tion­als in 14 days. This time around it is four com­pet­i­tive match­es in 11 days and that changes the sce­nario con­sid­er­ably.

In some ways, the work­load is sim­i­lar to what a team would face at a Gold Cup, where you play three group match­es and then, if suc­cess­ful, have to pre­pare al­most im­me­di­ate­ly for a knock­out game. The dif­fer­ence here is that there is al­so sig­nif­i­cant trav­el in­volved and many of the play­ers will be ar­riv­ing from clubs in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent leagues and at dif­fer­ent stages of their do­mes­tic sea­sons.

That is where squad man­age­ment be­comes very im­por­tant.

I do not ex­pect Derek King to se­lect a squad sim­ply based on what his best start­ing 11 looks like. He is like­ly think about who can play twice in a short pe­ri­od, who can come in­to the side with­out the lev­el drop­ping too much, which po­si­tions need ex­tra cov­er and which play­ers give him flex­i­bil­i­ty.

There may be a temp­ta­tion among sup­port­ers to judge every team se­lec­tion in­di­vid­u­al­ly but the big­ger pic­ture has to be con­sid­ered. A play­er who starts against Haiti may not nec­es­sar­i­ly start against Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic three days lat­er, while an­oth­er play­er could be held back specif­i­cal­ly for Cu­raçao. Some ro­ta­tion will not on­ly be ex­pect­ed, it will prob­a­bly be nec­es­sary.

The over­seas clubs will al­so be watch­ing close­ly.Many of our play­ers will leave their clubs, play po­ten­tial­ly heavy min­utes in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, trav­el be­tween coun­tries and then head straight back in­to their do­mes­tic sched­ules. Clubs nat­u­ral­ly be­come con­cerned about work­load and in­juries dur­ing these win­dows par­tic­u­lar­ly where sev­er­al match­es are in­volved. There has to be a sen­si­ble bal­ance be­tween get­ting the best out of play­ers and mak­ing sure they are not run in­to the ground.

For sup­port­ers though, there is plen­ty to be ex­cit­ed about be­cause this is prob­a­bly the first time in a while that we are go­ing to get a gen­uine mea­sure of the depth avail­able to this na­tion­al team and so many games with­in that time span.

It is easy to say that we have 25 or 30 play­ers ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing at this lev­el.

Can the team make four or five changes and still per­form? Can some­one who has been on the bench come in­to a cru­cial match and look com­fort­able? Can we man­age a lead away from home? Can we re­cov­er from a poor first half and still find a re­sult? These are the things that com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball tends to ex­pose.

There is al­so plen­ty at stake.

T&T are in a League A group that in­cludes Cos­ta Ri­ca, Haiti, Cu­raçao, Nicaragua and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. Un­der the for­mat, T&T will play four match­es dur­ing this phase, with the top two teams ad­vanc­ing to the Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nals.

There is al­so the Gold Cup pic­ture to con­sid­er, along with League A sur­vival and the FI­FA and Con­ca­caf rank­ing points that come with com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­als.

So when we talk about progress dur­ing this win­dow, it can­not on­ly be about whether the team plays at­trac­tive foot­ball.

Progress should mean col­lect­ing points away from home, mak­ing the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um dif­fi­cult for op­po­nents, show­ing bet­ter game man­age­ment and prov­ing that the squad has more than one de­pend­able op­tion in key po­si­tions.

It should al­so mean see­ing a team that un­der­stands what is at stake.

The two home match­es, against Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on Sep­tem­ber 27 and Cu­raçao on Oc­to­ber 4, should gen­er­ate some ex­cite­ment among sup­port­ers be­cause these are ex­act­ly the nights when the na­tion­al team needs a home crowd be­hind it.

There will be four match­es, plen­ty of trav­el and very lit­tle re­cov­ery time be­tween games. There will al­most cer­tain­ly be changes in per­son­nel along the way and prob­a­bly a few dif­fi­cult mo­ments as well.

But that is why this win­dow should be in­ter­est­ing.

Now comes the part where we find out how much of that work can hold up when the points ac­tu­al­ly mat­ter.