Shaun Fuentes

Ja­maican Howard McIn­tosh, a re­cent­ly ap­point­ed de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer for the Caribbean, says the re­gion faces hu­mon­gous tasks in its ef­fort to de­vel­op the game in the Caribbean at a rapid rate. McIn­tosh, who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed one of two re­gion­al Fi­fa De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cers -the oth­er be­ing An­ge­nie Kan­hai of T&T-told the Ja­maican press that the short­com­ings are wide-rang­ing and dy­nam­ic, there­fore af­fect­ing every stage of the foot­ball in­fra­struc­ture. "The Caribbean has its unique chal­lenges as a re­gion, gen­er­al­ly. It is no dif­fer­ent in foot­ball. Our re­sources are lim­it­ed. The tech­ni­cal in­fra­struc­ture in the re­gion ranges from poor to in­ad­e­quate in most places.

"Our play­ing sur­faces are poor. The lev­el of coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion needs to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved. Fi­nal­ly, our ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty must be ex­pand­ed," he said. "All stake­hold­ers in the sport, gov­ern­ment, state agen­cies, com­mu­ni­ty and so­cial de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions; the pri­vate sec­tor, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, schools, par­ents and vol­un­teer or­gan­i­sa­tions all have roles to play," said McIn­tosh. With the foot­ball in­fra­struc­ture large­ly be­low par, McIn­tosh not­ed that it is a cred­it to the re­gion­al game that four Caribbean na­tions were able to make it to the men's se­nior World Cup. "Ab­solute­ly. The suc­cess of coun­tries like Ja­maica, T&T mak­ing it to the World Cup is no small achieve­ment. It has good and bad. It has been achieved with poor in­fra­struc­ture, low pro­fes­sion­al­ism and un­der­de­vel­oped ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty. At the same time, it has in­creased ex­pec­ta­tions of the peo­ple in the re­gion. Ex­pec­ta­tions that are very dif­fi­cult to meet un­til the req­ui­site im­prove­ments are made."

Roberts among­goals for Char­lotte

Af­ter an el­bow frac­ture ruled him out of the last three match­es of T&T's 2014 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign last year, strik­er Dar­ryl Roberts is fi­nal­ly back play­ing and now at­tached to US Pro Di­vi­sion team Char­lotte Ea­gles. Roberts net­ted a 66th minute item in Char­lotte's 2-1 win over Har­ris­burg City Is­landers on Fri­day. He met a ball from Joseph Kab­we be­fore con­vert­ing to tie the scores at 1-1. Roberts al­so net­ted a 57th minute goal the pre­vi­ous week­end in Char­lotte's 2-0 win over An­tigua Bar­racu­d­as. To­ba­go-born play­er Dar­ren To­by al­so plays for Char­lotte. "It's great to be play­ing again. I was ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed to miss out on the last set of games in the cam­paign be­cause of in­jury but I'm ac­tive again and I've been among the goals. Hope­ful­ly I can keep on get­ting bet­ter and fit­ter. The main thing now for me is to get as much game time as pos­si­ble," Roberts said. Scot­tish-based play­er Collin Samuel was al­so in on the scor­ing, net­ting an eighth minute item in Ar­broath's 3-1 win over East Fife, for­mer team of Arnold Dwari­ka in the Scot­tish Sec­ond Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day. Over in Bel­gium, Khaleem Hy­land played all of Rac­ing Genk's 3-2 win over Stan­dard Liege on Sun­day.

Crew hopes Bir­chall brings depth to line up

Amer­i­can MLS club Colum­bus Crew hopes that sign­ing Chris Bir­chall to a mul­ti-year con­tract can help ease some of their in­jury woes this sea­son and they in­tend to cap­i­talise on the play­er's abil­i­ty to play var­i­ous roles. Dan­ny Rourke is one of Crew's most ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers but an in­jury to him helped paved the way for Bir­chall's ar­rival at the club on the week­end, ac­cord­ing to Crew tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, ex-Amer­i­can play­er Bri­an Bliss. The health of one of the Crew's most vet­er­an play­ers helped pave the way for the club to sign Bir­chall, a de­fen­sive mid­field­er. "Dan­ny's been play­ing well for us, but we al­so know (its) Dan­ny's last year and a half to two years he's been through some re­al dif­fi­cul­ties with his in­juries," Bliss said. "We just don't know if he's go­ing to play two games and sit out five or play two, sit one out, play two and sit out four." Bir­chall can al­so play wide right. He's got good speed, gets up the line and can whip in a good cross. He can play there and he can play right back if we need him to, but his pri­ma­ry spot is in the mid­dle of the mid­field." Bir­chall had been keep­ing fit with Port Vale and played a cou­ple re­serve league games for them, re­cent­ly.

Moli­no sets up Or­lan­do win­ner

Na­tion­al mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no made an as­sist to help Or­lan­do City score an 88th minute win­ner through Ian Fuller in the club's 3-2 win over Pitts­burgh River­hounds on Sat­ur­day be­fore 6,722 fans at the Flori­da Cit­rus Bowl. Moli­no has been in good touch for Or­lan­do this sea­son which has seen the club play un­beat­en so far. "We're hav­ing a good run at the mo­ment and every­one's re­al­ly en­joy­ing how things have gone. It's all about try­ing to im­prove our foot­ball and I am get­ting valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence every day at Or­lan­do es­pe­cial­ly when we have match­es. "I want to keep play­ing and stay­ing in­jury free and hope­ful­ly push­ing on for an­oth­er ti­tle with Or­lan­do," Moli­no said. The Li­ons will play two match­es on the road next week­end against An­tigua Bar­racu­da FC on Fri­day and Sun­day.

Yorke to play against Zi­dane, Re­al ex-stars

Dwight Yorke will be among for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Re­al Madrid play­ers who will face each oth­er next month in a char­i­ty game or­gan­ised by the new­ly-crowned Span­ish cham­pi­ons. Leg­ends from both clubs have been lined up for the Cora­zon Clas­sic Match 2012, due to take place at Es­ta­dio San­ti­a­go Bern­abeu on June 3. A re­turn match at Old Traf­ford has al­so been agreed for next year, on June 2. The stel­lar names in the Reds squad in­clude Roy Keane, Ed­win van der Sar, De­nis Ir­win, Andy Cole, Yorke and Bryan Rob­son while Re­al Madrid's glit­ter­ing re­cent past will be rep­re­sent­ed by the likes of Zi­dane, Fi­go, Re­don­do, Hi­er­ro, Bu­tragueño, San­chis, Helguera and Mori­entes. For some play­ers, it will be a re­match-Unit­ed and Re­al Madrid met in the Cham­pi­ons League quar­ter­fi­nals of 2000 and 2003 with the Span­ish gi­ants win­ning both ties, 3-2 and 6-5 on ag­gre­gate. The pro­ceeds from this star-stud­ded match will sup­port the Re­al Madrid Foun­da­tion's char­i­ty work in Africa.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for So­ca War­riors/TTFF.