Shaun Fuentes

In­dia-based mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald was over­joyed last Tues­day as he wit­nessed his for­mer team Cale­do­nia AIA pull off a win over W Con­nec­tion, to cap­ture the Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship ti­tle on their way to a place in the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. Cale­do­nia open its Cham­pi­ons League cam­paign away to Cordell Cato's MLS club Seat­tle Sounders on Au­gust 2 while Con­nec­tion host Guatemala's Xe­la­ju, on the same night. "It's a mas­sive achieve­ment for Cale­do­nia," Theobald said. "Win­ning the FA Cup was good for us but this ti­tle is re­al­ly spe­cial and es­pe­cial­ly be­ing able to com­pete with the rest of Con­ca­caf and to be on dis­play on in­ter­na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tions like Fox Soc­cer and ES­PN will be a big lift for the club and the coun­try.

"The peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty should be very proud of this. I hope they can turn out and full the sta­di­um when "Cali" is play­ing at home," said Theobald. There is talk on whether the ex-T&T cap­tain will in fact re­turn to Cale­do­nia colours for the Cham­pi­ons League af­ter go­ing on loan to Dem­po SC from the lo­cal club last year. "I have to look af­ter my fu­ture and cur­rent­ly talks are be­ing held over my next move but noth­ing is fi­nalised as yet. I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­joy win­ning the In­di­an league ti­tle with Dem­po and now I'm just thrilled to see the boys at Cale­do­nia be­ing able to see their hard work pay off al­so," added the for­mer Falkirk man.

Yorke launch­es tal­ent search in In­dia

Dwight Yorke teamed up with In­di­an foot­ball star Suni Chhetri on Tues­day to launch a tal­ent hunt pro­gramme in In­dia at Un­der-16 lev­el, to be con­duct­ed with In­dia's lead­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions au­thor­i­ty, Bhar­ti Air­tel, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. Chhetri is con­sid­ered a mod­ern day star in Asian foot­ball while Yorke was re­port­ed­ly a hit as sev­er­al re­called his hero­ic days with the Old Traf­ford club. Chhetri was al­so in Port-of-Spain last year for an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly with T&T. "At my time, we did not have that many op­por­tu­ni­ties and with guys like Dwight (Yorke) mo­ti­vat­ing the young­sters, it is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be a great ex­pe­ri­ence," said Chhetri. Yorke men­tioned that it would be fan­tas­tic for In­dia to one day qual­i­fy for the World Cup. "It is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the kids to ex­cel in the sport of foot­ball. They will get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see Man­ches­ter Unit­ed from the close quar­ters. It's a once in a life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty. When I start­ed as a 16-year-old kid, the con­di­tions were pret­ty much the same in my coun­try, the fa­cil­i­ties were hor­ren­dous. "You have to start from some­where. You will nev­er get it right at the first at­tempt. But it is not a small ini­tia­tive. It is go­ing to be a long as­so­ci­a­tion, you get to start some­where. There is al­ways go­ing to be a ques­tion mark, but we are here for five years. To see In­dia play­ing in the World Cup one day, that is go­ing to be the dream and with the sup­port from the AIFF and the gov­ern­ment we will see In­di­an play­ers play­ing at the top lev­el," Yorke in­sist­ed. The Air­tel Ris­ing Stars scout­ing pro­gramme will cov­er 16 cities across In­dia and pick 12 tal­ent­ed foot­ballers to at­tend a week-long train­ing camp at Old Traf­ford.

Pelti­er wants record goals

Lester Pelti­er is aim­ing to hit the 20-goal mark in the new Slo­vak Cor­gon Liga sea­son af­ter com­plet­ing his record trans­fer move to cham­pi­ons K Slo­van Bratisla­va, last week. He's al­ready had five train­ing ses­sions with the team as they look ahead to their sea­son open­er. "I've set­tled in quite well here. It's a big­ger club than AS Trencin and the pres­sure is on me to de­liv­er the goods but I'm a lot more ex­pe­ri­enced now than when I first came to Slo­va­kia. I think my game has im­proved and I'm ac­cus­tomed to the con­di­tions," said Pelti­er. "The de­mands for goals will be a lot more on me now be­cause of the trans­fer fee which was a record and the fans here will want to see me per­form. Slo­van has a good record in Eu­rope al­so so ob­vi­ous­ly this sea­son the club will want to try and reach as far as pos­si­ble in Eu­rope. This is a new chal­lenge for me but I'm def­i­nite­ly up for it," added the ex-San Juan Jabloteh play­er.

Webb vows to bring stars to the Caribbean

While Ja­maica, Cu­ba and An­tigua/Bar­bu­da are car­ry­ing the Caribbean's Brazil 2014 hopes, re­cent­ly in­stalled Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Jeff Webb says he wants to en­cour­age more par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sport among re­gion­al youth play­ers. And one way of do­ing that is to bring the in­ter­na­tion­al stars to these shores so that lo­cal play­ers can see what is at stake and to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­ter­ac­tion. "Which child wouldn't want to see Li­onel Mes­si in the flesh? See­ing these su­per­stars gives con­fi­dence and the will to know, I too can be great, I too can achieve great­ness," Webb said. "This is our new man­date at Con­ca­caf; help­ing young foot­ballers be­lieve in their abil­i­ties and achieve great­ness. We are fo­cus­ing on the game and its play­ers, not the pol­i­tics." Ex-FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er was able to bring the likes of Pele, Michel Pla­ti­ni, Care­ca, Be­be­to, Franz Beck­en­bauer and David Beck­ham among oth­ers. Webb will now try to let the present day as­pir­ing Caribbean stars ex­pe­ri­ence some of the same.

Ex-Pres play­er un­veile­dat Mon­roe Col­lege

For­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do mid­field­er Ama­ra Thomas was last week un­veiled as one of two ma­jor sign­ings by Mon­roe Col­lege for the 2012 Unit­ed States' NSCAA sea­son. The oth­er play­er is South Amer­i­can de­fend­er Fer­nan­do Hi­dal­go. Head coach Mar­cus Diber­na­go, the 2011 NSCAA Coach of the year, said he was de­light­ed to se­cure a play­er of Thomas' abil­i­ty. "I am thrilled that both Amare and Ed­uar­do have cho­sen Mon­roe Col­lege as the place to launch their col­le­giate ca­reers," said coach DiBernar­do. "These are two great ad­di­tions to our al­ready-tal­ent­ed group of play­ers. The team is very ex­cit­ed to wel­come both play­ers in­to the Mus­tangs' fam­i­ly. In 2009, Thomas at­tend­ed a Dal­las FC sum­mer camp where he was named the camp's "Most Valu­able Play­er."

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for the So­ca War­riors/TTFF.