So­ca War­riors de­fend­er Car­lyle Mitchell had his first train­ing ses­sion as a mem­ber of the US Ma­jor League Soc­cer's Van­cou­ver White­caps on Thurs­day at Em­pire Field, af­ter ar­riv­ing in the coun­try late Wednes­day. The ver­sa­tile Mitchell was with­out a club this sum­mer af­ter Joe Pub­lic FC with­drew from the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League. But his stay in soc­cer No Man's Land didn't last long af­ter his agent and for­mer coach Derek King, him­self a past na­tion­al de­fend­er, con­tact­ed Mitchell with some promis­ing news ear­li­er this month. "I got a call from my agent say­ing the White­caps need a de­fend­er and (would I be in­ter­est­ed)," Mitchell said. "I said of course. I would love to play for the White­caps."

So the 24-year-old cen­tre­back signed a Ma­jor League Soc­cer con­tract with the Van­cou­ver White­caps just be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 15 ros­ter freeze and fi­nal­ly ar­rived in Van­cou­ver on Wednes­day. Visa is­sues de­layed his ar­rival and he had his first train­ing ses­sion with his new club Thurs­day af­ter which he said: "As a foot­baller, your dream is to go high­er and this is a step­ping stone," "MLS is a big step. It will be bet­ter for me and the na­tion­al team." He joins sev­er­al oth­er Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ter­na­tion­als in MLS-in­clud­ing Los An­ge­les Galaxy mid­field­er Chris Bir­chall, Philadel­phia Union mid­field­er Keon Daniel, Colum­bus Crew de­fend­er Julius James, Sport­ing KC de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus and San Jose for­ward Scott Sealy.

"The in­ten­si­ty here is very high," Car­lyle said, when asked for his first im­pres­sions of play at MLS lev­el. "I've seen the league on TV. It's a great league with great crowd sup­port and great me­dia cov­er­age. Every­thing is pro­fes­sion­al." The six-foot-one, 165-pound de­fend­er said he's strong in the air and likes to keep play "sim­ple." "I score off a lot of head­ers," he said. White­caps in­ter­im head coach Tom Soehn felt Mitchell had a "de­cent" day of train­ing con­sid­er­ing he just ar­rived. "At the end, I felt he got a lit­tle bit tired and got ex­posed but he com­mu­ni­cates and he's ath­let­ic," he said. "Of­fen­sive­ly, I think he's go­ing to be a threat be­cause he's pret­ty ag­ile." Mitchell could make his Van­cou­ver de­but in the re­serve league game against the Port­land Tim­bers at Swan­gard Sta­di­um on Mon­day.