Shaun Fuentes

For­mer na­tion­al head coach and cap­tain, Rus­sell Lat­apy, has been de­scribed as the per­fect num­ber 10 play­er by for­mer Por­tu­gal-born play­er Rui Capela Batista. Both Lat­apy and Batista played against each oth­er dur­ing Lat­apy's days at Aca­d­e­m­i­ca and FC Por­to. Capel­la played for Farense and Esp La­gos. On hear­ing Lat­apy be­ing named as one of the top 50 sport­ing leg­ends in T&T, Capel­la, now a coach in Paraguay, said the "Lit­tle Ma­gi­cian" made quite a name for him­self at every club he played for in Por­tu­gal. He lat­er played for Boav­ista be­fore join­ing Hi­bern­ian in Scot­land. "I re­mem­ber him...very good play­er Rus­sell Lat­apy. He was the per­fect num­ber 10 to have in your team," Capel­la said. "I think every time he was about to play for his team, the peo­ple would look for­ward to see what he was up to."

Bar­ry An­der­son, a foot­ball cor­re­spon­dent with the Scots­man fol­lowed Lat­apy dur­ing his time in Scot­land, adding that the play­er was still large­ly con­sid­ered a leg­end at Hi­bern­ian and Falkirk. "He thrilled fans with his moves on the pitch. Lat­apy could eas­i­ly have been Scot­tish. He was al­most tai­lor-made for this coun­try," An­der­son said. "Bags of tal­ent, loved scor­ing goals, cel­e­brat­ing and al­ways played with a smile on his face. Away from foot­ball, he al­so liked to en­joy him­self. "Scot­tish peo­ple love ge­nius play­ers like him who al­so have char­ac­ter and like a laugh. That's why Lat­apy felt so at home in Scot­land. I in­ter­viewed him on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions while he was here with Hi­bern­ian, Rangers, Dundee Unit­ed and Falkirk and he was al­ways en­gag­ing com­pa­ny and very down to earth." Lat­apy re­turned to Por­tu­gal where he's cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing last Fri­day af­ter re­ceiv­ing his award at the Sport­ing Leg­ends Gala Din­ner at the Hilton, the pre­vi­ous night. "It's a ma­jor ho­n­our to be recog­nised for my ef­forts. I think the coun­try has done a fair amount over the 50 years and hope­ful­ly we can go on to do­ing just as good or maybe bet­ter now in what's com­ing up for all of our ath­letes," Lat­apy added.

Rix set­tles in at Cen­tral FC

For­mer Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al Gra­ham Rix is fi­nal­is­ing his squad for the start of the T&T Pro League sea­son. The for­mer Ar­se­nal play­er and coach at Chelsea was brought in by the Pro League for Cen­tral FC and is work­ing along­side as­sis­tant coach­es Kevin Jef­frey and An­tho­ny Sher­wood, the ex-Un­der 20 stand­out. The team is man­aged by Nor­ris Fer­gu­son with Brent San­cho as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor. "He's set­tled in re­al­ly well and brings a lot to the ta­ble. It's more than just try­ing to pre­pare a team to com­pete in the Pro League but the fo­cus is al­so on over­all de­vel­op­ment of our play­ers," San­cho said. "We are go­ing through every­thing that we need to take part in the League be­cause that's one of our ma­jor ob­jec­tives and hope­ful­ly we can bring lo­cal foot­ball in­to Cen­tral in a mean­ing­ful way." Some of the play­ers who have been in train­ing with Cen­tral FC in­clude Hay­den Tin­to, Mar­vin Phillip, Cyd Gray, Mar­vin Oliv­er and Willis Plaza, just back from a stint in Viet­nam.

Joseph keen to re­turn to North East

De­spite be­ing un­able to se­cure a con­tract af­ter com­plet­ing his tri­al in Mex­i­co, T&T Olympic team mid­field­er Jayson Joseph is ea­ger to put on the North East Stars strip in the up­com­ing T&T Pro League sea­son. The ex-T&TEC play­er will be one of An­gus Eve's at­trac­tions in his squad which in­cludes a line up of lo­cal tal­ent in­clud­ing Cor­nell Glen, Mic­ah Lewis and Ker­ry Bap­tiste among oth­ers. "I'm still look­ing for­ward to re­join­ing North East. I've played un­der An­gus Eve at the na­tion­al lev­el and we have a good un­der­stand­ing. "Hope­ful­ly I can con­tin­ue where I left off and bring some­thing ex­tra to the club and help them win tro­phies this sea­son. " I'm re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about the com­ing sea­son be­cause I be­lieve there are op­por­tu­ni­ties wait­ing to be tak­en and it's a good chance for play­ers like me to fol­low our dreams," Joseph said.

Coach says Cou­va sur­face dif­fer­ent to MLS

He prob­a­bly didn't mean that the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um play­ing sur­face wasn't fit for good foot­ball but Seat­tle Sounders head coach Si­gi Schmid did have a cou­ple things to say about the out­field af­ter his team de­feat­ed Cale­do­nia AIA 3-1 last Thurs­day in the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League. Schmid's team, de­spite af­ter their trav­el woes that he spoke of, still man­aged to pro­duce a win­ning per­for­mance. "Con­sid­er­ing every­thing that we went through, I was very pleased. It was a very dif­fi­cult trav­el sit­u­a­tion for us. The guys ba­si­cal­ly had very lit­tle sleep on Mon­day night. Our flights got de­layed," said Schmid. "It's hot and hu­mid. The field is not a sur­face you're go­ing to see in MLS; it's a much dif­fer­ent sur­face, so they had to deal with all those things. So I was very proud that the team was able to deal with all that and come out with the re­sult we need­ed."

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for TTFF/So­ca War­riors. Fol­low him on twit­ter@Pro­Look2006