Shaun Fuentes

For­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Clint Mar­celle is an­oth­er lo­cal coach who en­dors­es the re­cent elite coach­es sym­po­sium host­ed by the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF). The for­mer Barns­ley play­er, who has al­so been an as­sis­tant coach with the T&T Olympic team, was se­lect­ed to be among a group of lo­cal coach­es by the TTFF and shared in the in­door and out­door ses­sions over three days at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma, last month. "It's been an ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for us. There are a lot of coach­es here with great qual­i­ties and al­so those in the pan­el. Per­sons like Alvin Corneal and Edgar Vi­dale are icons in our foot­ball and we are striv­ing to be just like them. There's been a col­lec­tive group here just brain­storm­ing and shar­ing ideas over the three days spent at the sym­po­sium," said Mar­celle, who al­so runs the Clint Mar­celle Acad­e­my in Trinidad. He spoke on the ben­e­fits of such an ef­fort be­ing over­seen by tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal and coach ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ja­maal Shabazz among oth­ers.

Corneal al­so in­tends to in­vite oth­er past stal­warts to make con­tri­bu­tions in the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. "This ef­fort is go­ing to ben­e­fit us once we do it col­lec­tive­ly and come to­geth­er maybe once a month and share our ideas for us go­ing for­ward. The past has gone and now we are head­ing in­to the fu­ture and we are the fu­ture of coach­ing in T&T," Mar­celle said. "Meet­ing new peo­ple and get­ting new ideas and head­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion than we were in the past and this can on­ly make me a bet­ter per­son and a bet­ter coach. We had coach­es in the past who had big egos and we have to move away from that and share things and hold more open dis­cus­sions on our foot­ball," added the 43-year-old for­mer Hull City and Ste­van­age Bor­ough play­er. Mar­celle al­so played in Por­tu­gal. One of the high points of his ca­reer in Eng­land was him scor­ing the goal at Wem­b­ley against Brad­ford City in April, 1997, to se­cure Barns­ley's pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier League for the 1997–98 sea­son. That goal is down as a leg­endary mo­ment in the club's his­to­ry.

Galaxy waits on un­de­cid­ed Bir­chall

As Los An­ge­les Galaxy con­tin­ues its on­go­ing pre­sea­son cam­paign, head coach Bruce Are­na has ad­mit­ted that Chris Bir­chall has been a no-show but is still hope­ful the for­mer Port Vale play­er may con­sid­er re­turn­ing to the club, par­tic­u­lar­ly with David Beck­ham agree­ing to an ad­di­tion­al two-year stay. "There hasn't been a de­ci­sion made on him," Are­na said of Bir­chall. "Orig­i­nal­ly he want­ed go back to Eng­land, so we ob­vi­ous­ly agreed to that and didn't re­new his op­tion. He was look­ing to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties in Eng­land. Per­haps he'll want to come back." Bir­chall mean­time has at­tract­ed in­ter­est in Eng­land and men­tioned that he would con­sid­er stay­ing in the UK in or­der to be clos­er to his fam­i­ly. "They (Galaxy) want me to go back for an­oth­er year at least," he said. "I've got a de­ci­sion to make whether I ac­cept the of­fer from Galaxy or see what oc­curs here (in Eng­land). If an of­fer comes here and it's right for me and the fam­i­ly, I'll take that in­to ac­count and make a de­ci­sion. Oth­er­wise, we'll move back to LA."

Gay fo­cused on Olympic qual­i­fiers

Na­tion­al Un­der-23 strik­er Ja­mal Gay is fo­cus­ing on hav­ing an im­pres­sive spell in the up­com­ing Olympic fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing round and tak­ing this coun­try to the Lon­don Olympics. There have been re­ports of a pos­si­ble move to the Amer­i­can MLS but Gay is aware that if that does come through it could af­fect his prepa­ra­tion time with the T&T team in the next few weeks as they pre­pare for the tour­na­ment which kicks off on March 22. "At the end of the day, qual­i­fy­ing for the Olympics is the main fo­cus for me and my team­mates," said Gay, who has been in good form for Cale­do­nia AIA. "I know there are a cou­ple op­tions to move abroad but hope­ful­ly it will work out well in good time. " Re­flect­ing on his goalscor­ing per­for­mance in T&T U-23s 1-0 win over Fin­land last Wednes­day, Gay added: "It's al­ways good to score be­cause I'm play­ing strik­er at the end of the day so scor­ing goals is my role. If I don't score, then it's not that big of a deal be­ing out there. "Coach An­gus push­es me a lot. Even when I'm not hav­ing my best day, he still makes me be­lieve I can do some­thing. The first half was a lot dif­fi­cult be­cause I was alone up there but our psy­chol­o­gist Mr Trevor James works with us and he helps me to be tough and keep on work­ing un­til some­thing hap­pens. We be­lieve in our abil­i­ty and we be­lieve that we can go ahead and qual­i­fy for the Olympics. We are work­ing very hard on and off the pitch to try and make this hap­pen," Gay end­ed.

Williams: Ja­maica has over­tak­en T&T

For­mer Ja­maican in­ter­na­tion­al Andy Williams, a past team­mate of Stern John at Colum­bus Crew, minced no words re­cent­ly when he said Ja­maica was com­fort­ably ahead of T&T on the world foot­ball lad­der. Williams spent 14 years as a play­er in the MLS while John sub­se­quent­ly moved to Eng­land and played for Pre­mier League teams such as Birm­ing­ham City and Sun­der­land. Williams was re­cent­ly giv­en a role with the Re­al Salt Lake coach­ing staff and he's tar­get­ing Ja­maica as a search­ing ground for new Re­al im­ports. "Tal­ent-wise and skill lev­el are off the charts (in Ja­maica)," he said. "We are the best in the Caribbean, over Trinidad and who­ev­er else. (Amer­i­can) col­lege coach­es go down there (to Ja­maica) and are sur­prised to see the tal­ent lev­el of the play­ers," Williams added.

Mean­time, in an­oth­er re­port, US agent Mike Wheel­er spoke on the T&T and Ja­maican mar­kets, say­ing: "Trinidad is a great mar­ket and the Ja­maican mar­ket is a good mar­ket just to find young, raw tal­ent. So it's tough to re­al­ly find a play­er that's been play­ing three, four, five years in those leagues be­ing able to make the jump in­to the MLS and be a con­trib­u­tor, it's tough. "I know the league well, I've been down there, I know the own­ers of the teams. They've got young bright tal­ents but you've got to get them out of that. I gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Ja­maican teams a cou­ple months ago and it's the same prob­lem al­ways. They don't want to lose their tal­ent to uni­ver­si­ties, they want to be paid. "They've been train­ing their play­ers from a young age but the MLS doesn't al­ways pay out­right for a trans­fer and will force these Trinida­di­ans, Ja­maica clubs, and take the play­ers on loan with op­tion to buy."