Unit­ed States-born mid­field­er Dre For­tune wore a So­ca War­riors shirt proud­ly at age ten as he cheered on this coun­try's se­nior foot­ballers at the 2006 World Cup Fi­nals in Ger­many. He was ac­com­pa­nied by his dad An­dre For­tune at T&T's three match­es. To­mor­row the 16-year-old will be among the play­ers mak­ing their de­but for this coun­try as they be­gin their quest for 2013 U-17 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion against British Vir­gin Is­lands at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um from 7 pm. Suri­name tack­les Guyana in the ear­li­er match from 5 pm. For­tune has ex­pe­ri­ence on his side, hav­ing trained with the Unit­ed States Un­der-15 squad and he was al­so part of the US U-15 Acad­e­my League. At age eleven, he spent two weeks at Barcelona's Acad­e­my af­ter be­ing spot­ted by Steve Archibald. He was al­so in­vit­ed to train at the Man­ches­ter City Acad­e­my last Au­gust dur­ing which time he suf­fered a bro­ken leg. For­tune has one main fo­cus this week. "I'm here to help Trinidad and To­ba­go get through to the CON­CA­CAF qual­i­fy­ing round for the Un­der-17 World Cup," For­tune told TTFF Me­dia.

"It's been a re­al plea­sure for me to be here. Even from when I was a lot younger, my dad and my fam­i­ly taught me a lot about the Trinidad cul­ture. I grew up on it. I sup­port­ed the na­tion­al team all along and now I'm very proud to be part of the na­tion­al team. The guys on this team are like fam­i­ly and I think we're go­ing to do well," he added. For­tune, who has T&T parent­age, re­ceived his pass­port in 2007 and is ea­ger to wear the red, white and black strip. "This is my dream and I think I speak for all my team­mates, to be able to wear the na­tion­al uni­form. We want to rep­re­sent well and we want to be win­ners," he said. Head coach Shawn Coop­er will have a fi­nal ses­sion at 7 am at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to­day. Man­ag­er Christo­pher Gou­veia ex­plained the ear­ly morn­ing ses­sion is be­ing held be­cause there is an­oth­er event at the venue lat­er in the day. "We'll train ear­ly in the morn­ing and then the boys will have the rest of the day to rest the legs and fo­cus on the open­ing game. It's the first in­ter­na­tion­al match for a lot of the play­ers so it's a cru­cial time for them. They've worked re­al­ly hard wait­ing on this day," Gou­veia said.