Mid­field­er Khaleem Hy­land is en­joy­ing a fine start to the Bel­gium First Di­vi­sion for SV Zulte Waregem, scor­ing two goals in­side the first month and press­ing on for fur­ther im­pres­sive per­for­mances. Hy­land net­ted his first league goal in Eu­rope against Stan­dard Liege and then got an­oth­er crack­er in a 2-1 loss to KV Meche­len be­fore be­ing red card­ed for a sec­ond book­able of­fense. The ex-Jabloteh play­er is hop­ing to con­tin­ue his run with the aim of at­tract­ing in­ter­est from a more rec­og­nized club in Eu­rope. "I've worked hard in pre­sea­son and so far it's been a per­fect start for me per­son­al­ly with the two goals be­cause last sea­son I didn't score. I want to have a re­al­ly good run for the club and for my­self," Hy­land said.

"The coach still be­lieves I can do bet­ter and he's been push­ing me. I have been work­ing a lot on shoot­ing from out­side in train­ing and it's paid off so far. I was dis­ap­point­ed with the red card in the last match be­cause I land­ed bad­ly and my foot caught the guy and the ref­er­ee made his de­ci­sion," he added. Hy­land's broth­er Kwasi was gunned down last year and Hy­land has been wear­ing a shirt with his im­age on the front un­der his Waregem play­ing shirt. "I wear the shirt be­cause I miss him. He al­ways want­ed to come and see me play when I made the move abroad and he nev­er got the chance so in a way my goals so far are ded­i­cat­ed to him. I know his spir­it is here with me and play­ing with the shirt keeps him close to me out there," Hy­land con­tin­ued.

Ed­wards side­lined with groin in­jury

Ip­swich Town mid­field­er, Car­los Ed­wards set up one of his club's goal in their sea­son open­er but then went off with a groin in­jury which could side­line him for the club's next few match­es. It is un­der­stood that Ed­wards, usu­al­ly a fast heal­er, could still be out for up to three weeks. Ed­wards cre­at­ed the goal for team­mate Tamas Briskin in Ip­swich's 3-1 win over Mid­dles­brough. "It's been a good build up to the sea­son and we are ob­vi­ous­ly hop­ing to build on the good start and push on for a top five fin­ish this sea­son and have a go at pro­mo­tion. It's dis­ap­point­ing to be out be­cause of the in­jury but I'm con­fi­dent I'll be back with the team be­fore too long," Ed­wards said.

Mean­time, Wigan Ath­let­ic boss Rober­to Mar­tinez has con­firmed that Ip­swich Town boss Roy Keane has ex­pressed strong in­ter­est in sign­ing T&T for­ward Ja­son Scot­land. "It's fair to say there is strong in­ter­est there from Ip­swich Town, and a few oth­er clubs have al­so asked us about Ja­son. It's just a case now of sit­ting down with all the par­ties and work­ing out what is the best move for Wigan Ath­let­ic," Mar­tinez told the Wigan To­day.

Williams wants to em­u­late Den­nis

De­fence Force cen­tre­back, Ke­ston Williams has his sights set on fill­ing the void in the T&T de­fence by Den­nis Lawrence. Williams, with a lanky built part­ly sim­i­lar to the ex-Wrex­ham play­er, al­so car­ries sim­i­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ties on the pitch for De­fence Force just as Lawrence did pri­or to his move to Eng­land dur­ing T&T's 2002 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign. Williams, a reg­u­lar starter for De­fence Force this sea­son, ap­peared late in T&T's 2010 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign and is now hop­ing to be a main­stay in the squad for the 2014 Brazil cam­paign. "Den­nis is one of the play­ers I re­al­ly ad­mired from since his days at De­fence Force and now I'm there and I'm hop­ing to achieve sim­i­lar suc­cess. He has been a role mod­el for a lot of us to look up to. I know it's a big shoe to fill in his ab­sence for the na­tion­al team but I'm work­ing to­wards it and hope­ful­ly I can help the na­tion­al team in the de­fence like Den­nis did over his ca­reer," Williams said.

Venezue­lan girls try to make huge im­pact

Venezuela's Na­tion­al Un­der-17 women's team will at­tempt to fol­low up on their im­pres­sive show­ing in the South Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers with a strong dis­play at the FI­FA Un­der 17 Women's World Cup in T&T next month. The Venezue­lans will feel the clos­est to home of all the oth­er 14 qual­i­fied na­tions and head coach Ken­neth Zseremeta, of Pana­ma, says his play­ers have ben­e­fit­ted from two years of prepa­ra­tions. Now they will make the best of a World Cup ap­pear­ance.

"It's not every day you reach a World Cup and that's why we're so ex­cit­ed. Now we need more in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence to make sure we're well enough pre­pared. Venezuela has a great fu­ture in the women's game: this is just a be­gin­ning," said Zseremeta. Venezuela drew their qual­i­fi­er with Chile and scored vic­to­ries over Colom­bia and Uruguay while los­ing to Ar­genti­na. They reached the se­mi-fi­nals of the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment. There play­ers to look out for in­clude mid­field­er Joe­mar Guare­cu­co and for­ward Isaura Vi­so. They will face New Zealand in their open­er on Sep­tem­ber 6 and come up against Spain and Japan in their oth­er Group C match­es.