Shaun Fuentes

Ita­lo Gal­biati, a for­mer AC Mi­lan man­ag­er and as­sis­tant coach to Fabio Capel­lo will be launch­ing a foot­ball acad­e­my in To­ba­go lat­er this year. The Ital­ian born will be in the sis­ter isle in June to launch the acad­e­my which is be­ing set up through the ef­forts of Ital­ian-based foot­ball con­sul­tant Ste­fano Mon­ti who be­came fa­mil­iar with Trinidad and To­ba­go and its foot­balling pos­si­bil­i­ties af­ter mar­ry­ing his Trinida­di­an girl­friend. Gal­biati vis­it­ed Trinidad once be­fore dur­ing Eng­land's vis­it in 2008 for a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al against this coun­try and is now keen on as­sist­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of play­ers for ex­change pro­grams. Ac­cord­ing to Mon­ti, ef­forts will be made to have col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion. The acad­e­my is ex­pect­ed to be based at the Phoenix ground.

"The aim is to cre­ate a op­por­tu­ni­ties for young foot­ballers from the is­land and help them at­tain a high lev­el of prepa­ra­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism for the sport. These skills will as­sist these young men to be­come ed­u­cat­ed cit­i­zens for the world of work or uni­ver­si­ty and of course there will be op­por­tu­ni­ties for the play­er or play­ers that stand out," ex­plained Mon­ti who has done work in the past with 1976 Phoenix FC and al­so man­aged Ital­ian fourth di­vi­sion club ASD Fran­cav­il­la. "The project will be set up to fo­cus on aca­d­e­mics, so­cial and foot­ball ed­u­ca­tion," Mon­ti added. The 74-year-old Gal­biati al­so worked as an as­sis­tant coach at Re­al Madrid, Ju­ven­tus and Ro­ma. He al­so played one game for In­ter Mi­lan and was al­so con­tract­ed as a play­er with Lec­co.

So­ca in­spires T&T at FIU tour­na­ment

A group of Trinida­di­ans at­tend­ing Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty have formed a sev­en-a-side team to cam­paign in the Uni­ver­si­ty's In­tra­mur­al five- team tour­na­ment. The team al­so has?ten Trinida­di­ans but al­so in­cludes play­ers from Haiti and Guyana. They play un­der the name "So­ca Ban­tons". "We love the mu­sic and of course we are fans of JW and Blaze on their morn­ing show, so we thought the name So­ca Ban­tons was pret­ty cool. And be­fore every game and at half time we warm up chant­i­ng Ben­jai's 'Take yuh time when yuh jookin it,'" team mem­ber Jean Marc Ram­per­sad said. "We try our best to rep­re­sent and spread word about Trinidad and To­ba­go and the cul­ture and of course there's no bet­ter way that to en­joy it through foot­ball," added Ram­per­sad.

So­ca Ban­tons fin­ished third in the tour­na­ment. Ram­per­sad is a for­mer St Mary's Col­lege stu­dent and grand­son of na­tion­al team ad­min­is­tra­tor Pe­ter Ram­per­sad. Some of the oth­er T&T mem­bers on the team in­clude Kurt Wor­rell, Bran­don Lewis, Aaron Fin­gal, Nicholas Xavier, Savion Ross, Benn Yorke-West­cott, Chris­t­ian Charles, and Nkosi Palmer

?

Theobald toasts Cale­do­nia

Asian-based mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald is back­ing his for­mer club Cale­do­nia AIA to make it through to the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League by way of a suc­cess run in the up­com­ing Caribbean Foot­ball Union club cham­pi­onship. Cale­do­nia are paired with Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers but will fan­cy them­selves,, af­ter cop­ping both the FA Tro­phy and Lu­cozade Shield ti­tles. Theobald en­joyed suc­cess with Dem­po SC as they cap­tured the In­di­an Pre­mier League ti­tle last month. "What a great feel­ing to win my first ti­tle away from home and to al­so see my old team win two ti­tles," Theobald said. "Cale­do­nia cre­at­ed great op­por­tu­ni­ties for play­ers to get out of the dark side of life and see some light through the game. I've been able to play in coun­tries like Hun­gary, Scot­land and In­dia and I came from Cale­do­nia. Hope­ful­ly they can con­tin­ue to do well and I'm def­i­nite­ly go­ing to back them to move on­to the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. I think is about time the club is seen on a big­ger stage," said Theobald.

Mc­Comie looks for more goal­keep­ers

Michael Mc­Comie was a goal­keep­er him­self in na­tion­al colours but cur­rent­ly he's hav­ing a bit of a wor­ry as he over­sees the prepa­ra­tion of the Na­tion­al Un­der-20 men's team for up­com­ing Caribbean Foot­ball Union World Cup qual­i­fiers. Of the 165 play­ers looked at in the screen­ing ses­sions last month, on­ly eight were goal­keep­ers. T&T has a his­to­ry of pro­duc­ing top class cus­to­di­ans but in the past five years or so, no first choice goal­keep­er for the se­nior team has man­aged to hold down a start­ing role with a rep­utable over­seas club. Not to take any­thing away from the likes of Jan Michael Williams or Mar­vin Phillip but the re­cent record of T&T goal­keep­ers is noth­ing com­pared to what it used to be. "It's a bit alarm­ing be­cause we had on­ly eight goal­keep­ers in the screen­ing but of course we have seen a lot of play­ers with po­ten­tial in the oth­er po­si­tions show­ing up. We have goal­keep­ers with pri­or youth in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence but we would def­i­nite­ly like to see more goal­keep­ers on the rise," Mc­Comie said.

?

Bir­chall linked to Chivas

Mid­field­er Chris Bir­chall has been linked to Amer­i­can MLS club Chivas USA and could be mak­ing his re­turn to the League in which he last played with LA Galaxy. The ex-Port Vale man hint­ed via his Twit­ter ac­count this week that he was hope­ful of com­plet­ing a deal with an MLS club this month. He lat­er con­firmed that noth­ing was fi­nal­ized. Back in March, while in LA for the club's cham­pi­onship cer­e­mo­ny, Bir­chall did say that he un­der­stood Chivas had ex­pressed in­ter­est in him. "I had a great time with LA in the Galaxy and it would be won­der­ful to re­turn to the League but time will tell. I haven't signed any­thing with any club at the mo­ment," Bir­chall said.

?

Ro­driguez signs with US Pre­mier club

For­mer Un­der-20 play­er Nasyir Ro­driguez has signed with Amer­i­can Pre­mier De­vel­op­ment Team North Sound Sea­Wolves for their up­com­ing sea­son. The ?21-year-old for­mer Queen's Park and De­fence Force play­er was one of three play­ers signed by the club as an­nounced on Tues­day. He al­so holds a Cana­da pass­port. The sign­ings now gives the Sea­Wolves an in­ter­na­tion­al fla­vor with Bu­ba Jam­meh ?who won the African Youth Cham­pi­onship play­ing for the Gam­bia U-17 team in 2009 while Joao Fon­se­ca hails from Brazil. "I think it's a good ex­pe­ri­ence for every­one when you can have play­ers from dif­fer­ent parts of the world," Sea­Wolves coach-own­er Alex Sil­va said in a press re­lease. "You can learn a lot, every­one has dif­fer­ent styles, per­son­al­i­ties. But first, they have to be good play­ers, and these guys are." The Sea­Wolves are mem­bers of the North­west Di­vi­sion of the PDL, the high­est lev­el of am­a­teur soc­cer in the Unit­ed States.