Shaun Fuentes

For­mer T&T cap­tain Du­ane Muck­ette be­came the lat­est play­er who has rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try to join the pro­fes­sion­al ranks in Eu­rope af­ter sign­ing with Por­tuguese third di­vi­sion club FC Bar­reirense ear­li­er this week. Muck­ette is ex­pect­ed to be un­veiled as a new mem­ber of the club to­day.

The for­mer Queen's Roy­al Col­lege mid­field­er is a past mem­ber of San­ta Rosa FC and is the sec­ond play­er from the club to make head­lines in the last few weeks fol­low­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of John Paul Rochford at a train­ing stint with Man­ches­ter City FC through the Dig­i­cel Kick­start pro­gram.

Muck­ette said he was quite thrilled to be en­ter­ing the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit. He joins a list of play­ers to have played in Por­tu­gal in­clud­ing Rus­sell Lat­apy, Leon­son Lewis, Clint Mar­celle, Wes­ley Webb, Aku­do Goodridge, Sean Coop­er, Au­r­tis Whit­ley and Cor­nell Glen among oth­ers

"I am hap­py to be here. I'm de­light­ed to have signed with FC Bar­reirense and very ex­cit­ed to play and see where this move will take me. Play­ing pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball has al­ways been my dream and I am grate­ful to be liv­ing it," Muck­ette said on Tues­day. Muck­ette joined the club on tri­al in ear­ly Jan­u­ary and will now try to break in­to the start­ing line up dur­ing their cur­rent mid-sea­son pe­ri­od.

"Since I ar­rived for the tri­al in the first week of Jan­u­ary it has been a great ex­pe­ri­ence. I think I have been fit­ting in well in train­ing and with the play­ers. The on­ly strug­gle is not be­ing able to un­der­stand what they are say­ing but I am em­brac­ing it as part of the ex­pe­ri­ence. We are in mid-sea­son so I just want to show what I can do and re­al­ly earn my place on the team by play­ing well."

Muck­ette wants to get on the scor­ing chart im­me­di­ate­ly and has his eyes on a pos­si­ble na­tion­al se­nior team call up at some point.

Ap­poo keeps beach soc­cer dreams alive

Na­tion­al beach soc­cer play­er Chad Ap­poo is cur­rent­ly nurs­ing a rup­tured ACL but has not giv­en up hope on rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try as the CON­CA­CAF Beach Soc­cer fi­nal round of qual­i­fy­ing lat­er this year.

Ap­poo, a for­mer St Mary's col­lege play­er, was in­volved in the Lu­cayan Cup Chal­lenge in Ba­hamas last year when T&T de­feat­ed pow­er­house Mex­i­co and Ba­hamas to win the tour­na­ment. He al­so has ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing in the Swiss Beach Soc­cer League with top club Swiss Charg­ers.

Ap­poo spoke about the na­tion­al team's prepa­ra­tions for the World Cup cam­paign, say­ing "The sup­port from the As­so­ci­a­tion has been tremen­dous, they took us un­der their um­brel­la and we've been pro­vid­ed with train­ing gear and equip­ment." "The prepa­ra­tions have been pro­gres­sive, the coach­ing staff is al­ways on the look out for new tal­ent and the play­ers wel­come the new com­pe­ti­tion as well. Hope­ful­ly, we can get some more In­ter­na­tion­al match­es (like the Lu­cayan Cup) in be­fore the next qual­i­fiers.

"Two years from now I hope to have helped Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fy for its first ever Beach Soc­cer World Cup. Al­so, for me I'd like to re­turn to Eu­rope and play in a cou­ple of leagues there.," Ap­poo end­ed.

Tough de­ci­sion leav­ing T&T in the 80s - Hart

Na­tion­al Se­nior Men's Team head coach Stephen Hart, dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view, spoke about his de­ci­sion to mi­grate to Cana­da in the ear­ly 80s.

Hart has com­plet­ed his time at St Bene­dict's Col­lege and had played for San Fer­nan­do Strik­ers and Tex­a­co in the lo­cal league and at age 20 he was se­lect­ed to the na­tion­al se­nior team by then head­coach Alvin Corneal to pre­pare for the 1982 World Cup qual­i­fiers. "I had a tough de­ci­sion to make, I was se­lect­ed by coach Alvin Corneal for prepa­ra­tion for the 1982 WCQ, at 20 yrs old and it was a dream.

How­ev­er, I had a good job, but I al­so want­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence life out­side of T&T. Uni­ver­si­ty of­fered me that op­por­tu­ni­ty and I jumped at it. Though I was hav­ing a good run in the top league at the time and scor­ing reg­u­lar­ly, I have to be hon­est, I am not sure if I would have made the squad at that time," Hart told Some Soc­cer Play­ing Cana­di­ans blog.

Hart who played sev­en match­es for T&T, was asked to com­ment on his suc­cess with T&T since tak­ing the head coach job in 2013. He replied : "I would not say that it was great suc­cess, but we had a good run in two suc­ces­sive Gold Cups, which were quite sim­i­lar to when I was in charge of Cana­da."With T&T the re­sponse from the play­ers has been tremen­dous, con­sid­er­ing the hard­ships they face and the well doc­u­ment­ed fi­nan­cial con­straints faced by the As­so­ci­a­tion. An­oth­er plus is that we have quite a few very at­tack­ing play­ers with good bal­ance."

Hart's next as­sign­ment is two 2018 World Cup qual­i­fiers away to St Vin­cent/Grenadines on March 25th and at home on Match 29th.

�2Shaun Fuentes is the Di­rec­tor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the

Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com