These mini-camps held on off-Fifa dates usually feature only domestic-based players. Lasting anywhere from a few days to a week, they offer the national team gaffer an excellent chance to scout up-and-coming talent and theoretically allow the players to ‘bond’ with each other. An important intangible when it comes to international soccer, given the precious little time these squads spend together compared to those on the club side of the game.
All of the Central American nations are currently engaged in their respective forms of microciclos. The Salvadoran federation went so far as to actually suspended the third round of its league season* so players could train with the national team ahead of an off-date Fifa friendly against the Dominican Republic on Aug. 30. The Panamanians scheduled friendlies for Aug. 5 against Peru and will play Cuba on Aug. 20 to complement their ongoing camp, one which the new manager has described as an experiment meant to test a new generation of footballers. This includes several who starred in recently completed UNCAF U20 Championship.
Honduras and its new manager Hernán Medford obliterated a university side 8-0 on Aug. 13 as part of its microciclo. Costa Rica doesn't have any friendlies slated, but are running a camp this week to introduce several domestic-based players to the national team set-up. Even relatively sad-sack Guatemala has jimmied up their own microciclo, and played a friendly on Aug. 14 against even sad-sacker Nicaragua.
(It should be noted that these mini-camps are all directly related to the upcoming Copa Centroamericana in the U.S. from Sept. 3 to the 13. The tournament that will offer a direct ticket to the 2016 special U.S.-edition Copa America. But they are held regularly throughout the football season.)
All this is not to say frequent mini-camps are some sort of iron-clad guarantee for success. Like, step one: organize a few microciclos; step two: revel in World Cup glory. Let's face it, a team like Guatemala can organize microciclo after microciclo until it all just becomes one all-encompassing ciclo, and they still won't challenge the U.S. or Mexico. But being able to pick an entire national squad from your own domestic league, and having that same league go so far as to rearrange its playing schedule to accommodate your training, well that's a luxury that Canadian national team manager Benito Floro’s coaching staff can only fantasize about.
In June, CSA president Victor Montagliani said his organization would focus on playing other teams from Concacaf amid what he called “the next phase” of preparation for presumably next year's Gold Cup, the 2016 Copa America and 2018 World Cup qualifiers. His organization has previously committed to having the senior men’s team play more friendlies in general, something which is definitely happening. But alongside the general hand-wringing over Canada's developmental problems exist the hidden disadvantages, such as the fact the Canadian national team manager competes against teams who have simply spent more time together and against coaching staffs who've had more opportunities to learn about their players. And there's not a lot that can be done about that.
* As readers of this site have likely already noticed, many of the links I use come from media outlets in Spanish-speaking Central America. I include them for two reasons, despite realizing many of CSN's readers do not read Spanish. First, to show I'm not simply making this stuff up, and secondly because I work on the assumption those truly curious will use one of the many freely available online translation tools to read the sites in question.