Nigel Si­mon

So­ca War­riors in­ter­im coach Hut­son "Bar­ber" Charles is pon­der­ing his over­seas call-ups for this month's Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Cup Group Eight sec­ond round qual­i­fiers at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, from No­vem­ber 14 -18.

T&T, the record eight-time Caribbean cham­pi­on, will open its bid for a spot in the eight-team fi­nals against St Vin­cent & the Grenadines on No­vem­ber 14 fol­lowed by match­es against Suri­name on No­vem­ber 16 and seed­ed team, Cu­ba, two days lat­er, af­ter which the top two teams from the group will ad­vance to the fi­nals sched­uled for An­tigua & Bar­bu­da in De­cem­ber.

Last month, the So­ca War­riors, which has missed the last two fi­nals, topped their first round Group Five se­ries in­volv­ing French Guiana, hosts St Kitts & Nevis and An­guil­la with max­i­mum nine points, to qual­i­fy for the sec­ond phase.

At the Warn­er Park Sta­di­um in Bas­seterre, the So­ca War­riors whipped French Guiana 4-1, edged the host coun­try 1-0 and clob­bered An­guil­la 10-0 with a team mixed with youth and ex­pe­ri­ence.

In­clud­ed in the 20-man squad were the over­seas-based quin­tet of Keon Daniel (Philadel­phia Union/MLS), Willis Plaza (Nav­iBank Saigon/Viet­nam), Hughton Hec­tor (Song Lam Nghe An/Viet­nam),

Car­lyle Mitchell (Van­cou­ver White­caps/MLS) and Robert Primus (Ak­tobe/Kaza­khstan) while both Khaleem Hy­land (Rac­ing Genk/Bel­gium) and US-based Kevin Moli­no (Or­lan­do City) missed out due to in­jury and tri­als, re­spec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, with a num­ber of oth­er US-based play­ers' sea­sons com­ing to an end last week­end and the sec­ond round group of qual­i­fiers not be­ing played dur­ing FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al dates as was the case for the first round, Charles could be forced in­to a few more changes.

Charles, who stayed clear of nam­ing the play­ers he has re­quest­ed, said, "We (T&TFF) have al­ready made con­tact with a num­ber of over­seas clubs with re­gards to the re­lease of play­ers and by the end of this week we should have a bet­ter idea of the play­ers who will be avail­able."

The quar­tet of Daniel, Primus, Hec­tor and Plaza should all be avail­able for se­lec­tion if re­quired as their re­spec­tive club sea­son have been com­plet­ed. In the USA, Daniel's Union was beat­en 3-0 by New York Red Bulls on Sat­ur­day and missed out on the MLS Play­offs while Primus fea­tured in his team's fi­nal match of the sea­son on No­vem­ber 24, a 3-0 win over Kairat to se­cure third in the Kaza­khstan Pre­mier League with 50 points from 26 match­es, three be­hind cham­pi­ons Shak­ter Kara­gandy while Ir­tysh was sec­ond with 51.

Over in Viet­nam, Hec­tor and his Song Lam Nghe An club took fourth spot with 41 points, sev­en adrift of league win­ners Da Nang while Plaza's Sai Gon had to set­tle for sev­enth spot, with 35 points.

De­fend­er Mitchell will be in ac­tion to­day against LA Galaxy with the win­ner mov­ing on to face San Jose Earth­quakes in the MLS West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals be­tween No­vem­ber 2-8 and pos­si­bly the con­fer­ence fi­nals be­tween No­vem­ber 11-18, which will mean miss­ing the CFU qual­i­fiers in To­ba­go.