Shaun Fuentes

Nick De Leon, son of ex-T&T play­er Leroy De Leon says he has two im­me­di­ate goals in his foot­ball ca­reer which kicked off on­ly this month. First­ly, he wants to es­tab­lish his place in the DC Unit­ed start team and sec­ond­ly he hopes to go on to be even bet­ter than his dad. De Leon made the re­marks as he looked on at a Trinidad and To­ba­go train­ing ses­sion at the Home De­pot Cen­ter, Cal­i­for­nia last week. "I've heard so much about him. I know he was re­al­ly good. It's been an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and some­thing I've al­ways strived for. I've al­ways looked up to my dad and pos­si­bly try to be­come bet­ter than him. I know it's go­ing to be tough shoes to fill but I'm off to a good start so far and hope­ful­ly I can keep it up. I've start­ed well and it's ex­cit­ing for me. Right now my goal is to get in the start­ing team and pret­ty much put my name out there."

Those look­ing on at De Leon in the num­ber 18 shirt in his de­but vs LA Galaxy ear­li­er this month would have seen flash­es of his fa­ther as he made a di­ag­o­nal run be­hind the Galaxy de­fence, latch­ing on­to Marce­lo Saragosa's through ball be­fore curl­ing a shot off the far post and in­to the back of the net in the 87th minute. "It was a good start for me and I would like to keep on work­ing hard and get in­to the DC start­ing team. That's my im­me­di­ate goal."

He added that he would be pur­su­ing his T&T pass­port, hav­ing liked what he saw of the T&T team. "I'm keep­ing my op­tions open. They're fun and I like the en­er­gy they bring and it looks like they are just pure­ly en­joy­ing the game. For sure I'm get­ting the pass­port," he said, adding that he's al­ways been in T&T's cor­ner, back­ing them at the 2006 World Cup and fol­low­ing the team just like he's been do­ing for the US Team.

Win­ches­ter hop­ing for over­seas deal

He jumped on a plane sev­er­al times over the past cou­ple years in hop­ing to se­cure an over­seas con­tract but Shah­don Win­ches­ter re­mains a W Con­nec­tion play­er. The 20-year-old strik­er who scored in the dy­ing stages ver­sus Pana­ma at the Home De­pot Cen­ter on Sun­day still has hopes of play­ing out­side of T&T. He could not help T&T ad­vance in the Olympic qual­i­fiers as they lost 2-0 to Hon­duras on Tues­day night to ex­it the qual­i­fiers. "It's all been good ex­pe­ri­ences. I'm at age 20 and even though the right deal hasn't come through as yet I'm keep­ing faith and I'll con­tin­ue work­ing to try and get a good deal out­side there," Win­ches­ter said. "I'm en­joy­ing my foot­ball and I want to seize the right op­por­tu­ni­ty. I'm aim­ing for the sky and they say you leave foot­prints on the moon so I'm def­i­nite­ly go­ing to keep striv­ing for bet­ter things," added the Princes Town res­i­dent and ex-Na­pari­ma Col­lege play­er. "I still have to keep work­ing hard and as a team we have to do more in train­ing to bet­ter our game. Hope­ful­ly we can all take the pos­i­tives from this ex­pe­ri­ence and work on the neg­a­tive as­pect of our game based on what hap­pened in these qual­i­fiers."

Webb looks set for Con­ca­caf pres­i­den­cy

Jef­frey Webb of the Cay­man Is­lands now looks al­most cer­tain to be­come one of the most in­flu­en­tial ad­min­is­tra­tors in world foot­ball as the new boss of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (Con­ca­caf). This is ac­cord­ing to in­sid­e­world­foot­ball.biz which added that Webb was the on­ly can­di­date to take over from for­mer Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er when the dead­line passed for nom­i­na­tions on Sun­day.

"I am hum­bled by the tremen­dous out­pour­ing of sup­port and en­cour­age­ment re­ceived from so many of the coun­tries," Webb said in a state­ment. "It is this uni­ty of the Con­ca­caf that will cham­pi­on our suc­cess, and if elect­ed, it is my in­ten­tion to build on that uni­ty through col­lab­o­ra­tion, trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty, en­gage­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty."

Webb is a mem­ber of Fi­fa's Trans­paren­cy and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee, one of the bod­ies set up to clean up world foot­ball's gov­ern­ing body. He is al­so chair­man of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union's (CFU) Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, es­tab­lished last year af­ter the scan­dal which led to the down­fall of Warn­er. Al­fre­do Hawitt of Hon­duras has served as in­ter­im Pres­i­dent since Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion from all foot­balling ac­tiv­i­ties. Webb, pres­i­dent of the Cay­man Is­lands Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CIFA), is un­der­stood to have been nom­i­nat­ed by 25 out of the 40 mem­ber na­tions in Con­ca­caf.

Bar­ring any last-minute hitch­es, he will be for­mal­ly vot­ed in­to of­fice dur­ing the Con­ca­caf Con­gress in Bu­dapest on May 23 on the eve of Fi­fa Con­gress in the Hun­gar­i­an cap­i­tal.

Cana­da women get set for T&T trip

Emi­ly Nick­er­son is one of the new­com­ers in the Cana­da's Un­der 17 Women's team and she's ea­ger to show her worth in the team's up­com­ing two-day train­ing camp in To­ba­go. Nick­er­son, a Grade 11 stu­dent at Cen­tral Kings, is in the squad that will face T&T's Un­der 17 team to­day and Sat­ur­day as both teams pre­pare for the Con­ca­caf fi­nal round of U-17 World Cup qual­i­fiers. T&T tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Even Pellerud is see­ing the up­com­ing match­es as good prepa­ra­tions for T&T which in­cludes some eight play­ers who played for T&T at the 2010 Fi­fa Un­der 17 Women's World Cup. "It's go­ing to be good prepa­ra­tion for us. Of course we want to play as many good games that we can to get the girls ready for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Cup. We will as­sess their readi­ness and work on the things that we need to be­fore we head to Guatemala for the tour­na­ment." T&T are al­so sched­uled for a train­ing camp in Ft Laud­erdale in a few days.