Po­lice FC youth team play­er, Matthew Woo Ling of St Mary's Col­lege was the lone T&T play­er se­lect­ed by for­mer Eng­land and Liv­er­pool leg­end John Barnes among eight play­ers who will trav­el to Sun­der­land AFC lat­er this month to spend one week train­ing at Sun­der­land's Acad­e­my of Light. The play­ers were cho­sen by Barnes at the end of the third Dig­i­cel Kick Start Clin­ics in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca in Hon­duras on Thurs­day. Woo Ling now joins, for­mer na­tion­al Un­der-20 and Un­der-17 cap­tain, Le­ston Paul and Ryan Fred­er­ick of W Con­nec­tion as play­ers from T&T who were se­lect­ed for the stint at Sun­der­land. In ad­di­tion to Woo Ling,the oth­er play­ers se­lect­ed were Vi­dal Gon­za­lez and Fer­nan­do Mene­ses from Pana­ma; Jose Villav­i­cen­cio, Bryan Lan­dav­erde and Al­varo Liza­ma from El Sal­vador; and Julio Oli­va and Ger­man Mejia from Hon­duras.

The clin­ics kicked off in T&T in late Ju­ly be­fore mov­ing on­to Pana­ma, El Sal­vador and its fi­nal stop, Hon­duras. Com­ment­ing on his se­lec­tion, John Barnes said: "This has been an­oth­er fan­tas­tic year for the Dig­i­cel Kick Start Clin­ics and I've seen some great po­ten­tial in this year's crop of foot­ballers. "It was a tough de­ci­sion to choose just eight from the 150 play­ers which took part in the Dig­i­cel Kick Start Clin­ics to train at Sun­der­land. That said, I be­lieve the foot­ballers I have se­lect­ed have the right amount of tal­ent, de­sire and de­ter­mi­na­tion to have a good ca­reer in foot­ball if they con­tin­ue to ap­ply them­selves. "I would like to wish them the best of luck and I re­al­ly hope that I come across them again in the not too dis­tant fu­ture play­ing for a lead­ing foot­ball club."

Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, and Con­ca­caf and CFU boss, Jack Warn­er, said: "The feed­back I've re­ceived from John Barnes and the coach­es in the Clin­ics this year has been fan­tas­tic. The Dig­i­cel Kick Start Clin­ics are a great ini­tia­tive and a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for as­pir­ing young foot­ballers to show­case their tal­ent." Les­ley Callaghan, Sun­der­land AFC Mar­ket­ing and Com­mer­cial Di­rec­tor, said: "We are de­light­ed that the Dig­i­cel Kick Start Clin­ics have been such a suc­cess and we are look­ing for­ward to wel­com­ing the tal­ent­ed young­sters to Sun­der­land lat­er this month."