Shaun Fuentes

Brent Sam, nev­er thought he would get a hat-trick on his de­but as the Na­tion­al Un­der-17 foot­ballers kicked off their 2013 FI­FA CFU World Cup qual­i­fy­ing bid against British Vir­gin Is­lands with a 23–0 bat­ter­ing of the vis­i­tors on Tues­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Sam struck sev­en goals. The Po­lice FC play­er who hails from Bourg Mu­la­tresse, sim­ply want­ed three points on the night. Pri­or to kick off he was not even men­tioned as one of the play­ers to fo­cus on. Head coach Shawn Coop­er didn't re­veal too much about the in­di­vid­ual in the pre-game build up.

"I saw his abil­i­ty to fin­ish in a very cool man­ner and I said there's some­thing about this boy we need to make bet­ter use of. He ac­tu­al­ly start­ed off in the left back po­si­tion and then we made the switch. Well it cer­tain­ly paid off tonight," Coop­er said af­ter the vic­to­ry."

Sam said he did not ex­pect to score sev­en goals. "All I want­ed was the team to win the first game. I was a bit ner­vous but once the game got go­ing, I set­tled down and we re­alised we could beat this team. We just went for it and the goals kept com­ing." While Sam is feel­ing good about his sev­en, he now has his eyes on Suri­name and Guyana, T&T's next op­po­nents. "We have to work hard­er in those games and move on to the next round. I want to play in a World Cup some day and this is my first op­por­tu­ni­ty, so I want to make it count," he added. Sam hopes one day to play at the high­est lev­el in Eng­land and is fond of Por­tuguese stand­out Chris­tiano Ronal­do. "I like Cris­tiano Ronal­do. He is quick and he can fin­ish. And my favourite team is Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. I hope I can keep scor­ing goals and make it in­to the se­nior team and hope­ful­ly one day play in Eng­land." T&T faces Suri­name in their sec­ond game to­day at 7 pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va.

Hart an­tic­i­pates T&T clash in Ft Laud­erdale

Trinida­di­an-born Cana­da head coach Stephen Hart says he will go in­to the Au­gust 15 friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al against this coun­try's se­nior team in Fort Laud­erdale hop­ing for a good per­for­mance from his side. Cana­da are still in the 2014 qual­i­fi­ca­tion race while T&T was boot­ed out last year. He called it an ide­al game in an in­con­ve­nient sit­u­a­tion.

Faced with win­ning a vi­tal game against Pana­ma on Sep­tem­ber 7 at Toron­to's BMO Field, Hart said he need­ed his team to re­group one last time. "It's a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion be­cause the Au­gust date is prob­a­bly the most hat­ed date in the FI­FA cal­en­dar," said Hart on a con­fer­ence call Thurs­day. "There's a lot of ne­go­ti­a­tion. As soon as I can I will re­lease the ros­ter but there's still a lot of back and forth go­ing on. "I think my con­cern is to call up­on some play­ers that if I do have to call up­on them in the Pana­ma game I would know what to ex­pect from them hav­ing seen them in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," Hart said. "I'm still try­ing to work out the ros­ter in that re­spect." T&T is like­ly to field a sol­id squad with Stoke City strik­er Ken­wyne Jones, Slo­vak-based strik­er Lester Pelti­er, Rac­ing Genk's Khaleem Hy­land, Or­lan­do City's Kevin Moli­no, Hugh­tun Hec­tor, De­vorn Jorsling among oth­ers all like­ly to be avail­able for the fix­ture.

Bir­chall cap­tains Crew in 2-1 win over Stoke

Mid­field­er Chris Bir­chall wore the cap­tain's arm­band in Colum­bus Crew's 2-1 win over Ken­wyne Jones' Eng­lish club Stoke City in Tues­day's pre-sea­son clash at Crew Sta­di­um. De­fend­er Julius James al­so played in de­fence as goals by Aaron Hor­ton and Ben Speas gave the hosts the win. Speas, who has yet to ap­pear in an MLS game, found the game-win­ner just three min­utes from time. "It was an ho­n­our to cap­tain Crew in this game against Stoke. There was a lot of talk about it with me be­ing from Eng­land and grow­ing up in the area," said Bir­chall. "I thought we played ac­tu­al­ly well. We're in sea­son now and this is a pre-sea­son af­fair for them but it's al­ways good when a team from the MLS could get good re­sults against a Pre­mier­ship side. I think it was a good vic­to­ry for the club." Stoke faces Kevin Moli­no's Or­lan­do City on Sat­ur­day in an­oth­er friend­ly.

Jagdeosingh nets dou­ble in Thai­land Pre­mier League

Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior team play­er Kendall Jagdeosingh pro­duced his best per­for­mance for Thai­land Pre­mier League team Chain­fat FC with a pair of goals in a los­ing ef­fort last Wednes­day. Jagdeosingh's side lost 4-3 to league pow­er­house Chon­buri FC. The re­sult left Chain­fat in 11th spot on the 20-team ta­ble in their first sea­son in the Pre­mier League. "Jag­gy" has scored three goals in 17 games for the club. "It's been a re­fresh­ing ex­pe­ri­ence so far. The League gets a lot of sup­port and it's well fol­lowed. We play in front of crowds like sev­en or eight thou­sand fans at home and about three thou­sand fol­low us when we play away from home," said the for­mer Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers man. He and T&T de­fend­er Yohance Mar­shall are the on­ly two black play­ers in the team. "My­self and Yohance are the on­ly black guys in the club and prob­a­bly in the city and at first it was a bit dif­fi­cult be­cause some­times peo­ple would stop and stare at us but you get ac­cus­tom to that af­ter a while. It's still a bit of a prob­lem we face in terms of a race is­sue on a dai­ly ba­sis es­pe­cial­ly as we don't speak their lan­guage but we're here to play foot­ball and the club has been good to us and we're do­ing well with them."

Sealy cel­e­brates end of drought

For­mer St Mary's Col­lege strik­er Scott Sealy was a re­lieved man on Sat­ur­day as he broke his 37-match score­less drought in Dal­las' 5-0 win over Port­land in Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer. Al­most any for­ward in a goalscor­ing drought will tell you that once the first one goes in, plen­ty more will fol­low. FC Dal­las cer­tain­ly hopes that's the case as three play­ers opened their sea­son ac­counts in Sat­ur­day's 5-0 rout of Port­land. Sealy had pre­vi­ous­ly done well enough to grab head­lines with 19 goals in 2006-07. How­ev­er, he came in­to Sat­ur­day's game hav­ing failed to find the back of the net in 37 ap­pear­ances since re­turn­ing to the league in 2010. "It's good to get that mon­key off your back and do­ing it in a win when you've been strug­gling, it feels good," Sealy said. "Three points and a goal is why you come to work." "In games past we've worked hard but been un­lucky. Five or 10 games ago, the shots would prob­a­bly hit the post and come back out but tonight they go in," Sealy said about the sec­ond goal. "It's a snow­ball ef­fect. Every­one's mak­ing runs and com­plet­ing pass­es, mak­ing tack­les, and it be­comes con­ta­gious," said the T&T na­tion­al.

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