Shaun Fuentes

He's not just ad­van­tag­ing the stage dur­ing his high-en­er­gy per­for­mances, but So­ca sen­sa­tion Machel Mon­tano is help­ing the youths of Siparia ex­ert their en­er­gies on the foot­ball field. The 2011 Road March/So­ca Monarch win­ner is a ma­jor sup­port­er of South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pow­er­house Siparia Spurs Foot­ball Club. Spurs have been knock­ing on the doors of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the T&TFF Na­tion­al Su­per League for a few sea­sons well af­ter dom­i­nat­ing com­pe­ti­tion in the south. And they've man­aged to se­cure a spon­sor­ship deal with Adi­das and have ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Mon­tano for of­fer­ing his premis­es and fa­cil­i­ties in Siparia to as­sist in the team's prepa­ra­tions. Though born in Care­nage, Mon­tano moved with his fam­i­ly to the south­ern vil­lage and at­tend­ed the Siparia Boys RC.

Spurs rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pas­cal Ram­sumair said Mon­tano has been "gen­er­ous" to the club. "We have spent a lot of time and we put in the ef­fort to try and take the young­sters from 11 years and up to­wards be­com­ing good play­ers and al­low them to move on to bet­ter things. One of our main prob­lems has al­ways been get­ting sup­port from the Siparia area to as­sist in the fund­ing and de­vel­op­ment of the club.

"Most of our sup­port comes from out­side. But we are very grate­ful to Mr Mon­tano who has helped us. This is go­ing a long way to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the club. He has as­sist­ed us by giv­ing us the use of his res­i­dence for our train­ing camps," said Ram­sumair who was an ob­serv­er at the re­cent T&TFF/Dutch KN­VB "C" Li­cense coach­ing course at Rousil­lac.

Adi­das, through a lo­cal con­tact, has pro­vid­ed equip­ment and gears for the team and they of­fered a prize in­cen­tive of a team bus had they made it in­to the Su­per League for 2011. Now they will try to go a step fur­ther this sea­son in or­der to jour­ney to their match­es in lux­u­ry. For­mer Strike Squad de­fend­er Dex­ter Fran­cis is a mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal staff which over­sees train­ing camps for play­ers from un­der 11 to un­der 20 through­out the year free of cost. Cur­rent­ly the club has a mem­ber­ship of 200 play­ers.

Lon­don takes aim at foot­ball stage

Eight-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal­ist, Bri­an Lon­don, wants to serve on the tech­ni­cal staff of a T&T foot­ball team. Lon­don dis­closed this af­ter com­plet­ing the re­cent T&TFF/Dutch KN­VB "C" Li­cense Coach­ing Course at the Rousil­lac Recre­ation Ground. Lon­don is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing his de­gree in sports stud­ies at UTT. He was among 30 coach­es from the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion who com­plet­ed the course.

"I'm do­ing my de­gree in sports stud­ies at UTT and they sent us here to de­vel­op our knowl­edge which we can use to help pre­pare for the In­ter-cam­pus games. This kind of ex­po­sure goes a long way in help­ing us im­part the knowl­edge to oth­er stu­dents. "I'm a foot­ball fan and when you look at it from a com­mu­ni­ty as­pect, I think we're lack­ing in­di­vid­u­als with knowl­edge and pas­sion to re­al­ly help make a dif­fer­ence. You have some with ei­ther or one of both but we need more per­sons with a com­bi­na­tion of both and I'm try­ing to build my­self to in turn build my com­mu­ni­ty and by ex­ten­sion build a bet­ter T&T," Lon­don said.

Lon­don said he was se­ri­ous about work­ing with a na­tion­al team.

"I'm giv­ing my­self two years to work with a se­nior team at some point. I al­ways achieve what I set out to do. It's about prob­lem solv­ing and as a coach now you get to be guide at the side. I've al­ways been a fan of T&T foot­ball. I will like to see us get to an­oth­er World Cup and hope­ful­ly we can see a core of play­ers tak­ing us to fu­ture World Cups." Known for his bit­ing so­cial com­men­tary, the Fyz­abad-res­i­dent touched on the on­go­ing mat­ter in­volv­ing Jack Warn­er, say­ing he was hop­ing for a favourable out­come for the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port. "I hope it can be re­solved and he can be re­in­stat­ed. The re­gion has ben­e­fit­ed from his in­put. The mat­ter has to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed but I hope he is set free and con­tin­ues his job. I hope even now while he is sus­pend­ed that our foot­ball can get on with the busi­ness of mak­ing progress."

'Jag­gy' de­light­ed with win­ner

Chris Bir­chall and Keon Daniel were not the on­ly na­tion­al play­ers to score in the Amer­i­can Leagues on the week­end as Kendall Jagdeosingh al­so starred for Rochester Rhi­nos in their 1-0 win over Har­ris­burg City Is­landers in USL Sec­ond Di­vi­sion ac­tion on Sat­ur­day. Jagdeosingh's goal came in the 65th minute in a game which was shown live on Fox Soc­cer chan­nel. "I'm de­light­ed to have scored the win­ner. I've been work­ing hard in train­ing and fi­nal­ly I got the chance to score an im­por­tant goal for Rochester. This has been my biggest goal since I made the move from Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers," Jagdeosingh said. Daniel mean­time net­ted his first goal for Philadel­phia Union in the MLS while Bir­chall al­so got his first of the sea­son for LA Galaxy.

An­drews could re­turn to Wrex­ham

Cur­rent­ly back home on the off-sea­son break, ex Glas­gow Rangers de­fend­er Mar­vin An­drews says he's like­ly to re­turn for an­oth­er sea­son with Wrex­ham. An­drews fin­ished the sea­son with the Welsh-club last month and is hop­ing to con­tin­ue at the club where Car­los Ed­wards and Den­nis Lawrence be­gan their over­seas pro ca­reers. "We had a good sea­son but we fell short of earn­ing pro­mo­tion. I'm look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­turn­ing to the club for next sea­son and con­tin­u­ing some­thing good with the man­ag­er Dean Saun­ders. There is al­ways the op­tion of go­ing back to Scot­land. But it looks like I could be back at Wrex­ham. I'm com­fort­able there and I'm al­so preach­ing the word of God at a church there which is an­oth­er rea­son I love be­ing there. I ac­tu­al­ly got in­volved with a church that Sil­vio Spann at­tend­ed when he was there and they al­lowed me to share my knowl­edge and spread the word of God," said An­drews.

An­tiguans mob Jones

Fans and play­ers rushed for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get close to Ken­wyne Jones last week­end as he ap­peared to hand out prizes at the first Guin­ness Street Foot­ball tour­na­ment in An­tigua. Mar­ket­ing and Sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Kennedy's Club Ltd, An­geliese Weeks said: " When we had Ken­wyne Jones here, he got a lot of sup­port and was re­ceived well by every­one. They were rush­ing him for au­to­graphs."

Jones has been trav­el­ing as an am­bas­sador for Guin­ness dur­ing the on­go­ing tour­na­ment. "It's been a great ex­pe­ri­ence mov­ing around as a Guin­ness am­bas­sador and I'm play­ing my role to pro­mote the game in any­way pos­si­ble. Foot­ball it­self is pop­u­lar in sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean and Guin­ness is us­ing its brand to pro­mote it and I'm en­joy­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence," Jones said. He is ex­pect­ed to be part of Stoke's pre­sea­son camp in Aus­tria on Ju­ly 8 ahead of the start of their Eu­ropa cam­paign on Ju­ly 28. Jones camped in Bad Rad­kers­burg, Aus­tria with the T&T team pri­or to the 2006 World Cup Fi­nals