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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Charles calls for Birchall, Jones

by

20121121

So­ca War­riors coach Hut­son "Bar­ber" Charles has made a call for Eng­land-based duo, strik­er Ken­wyne Jones (Stoke City) and Ip­swich Town winger Car­los Ed­wards, as well as US Ma­jor League's Soc­cer Colum­bus Crew mid­field­er Christo­pher Bir­chall, to strength­en his squad ahead of the 17th Dig­i­cel Caribbean Foot­ball Union Cup fi­nals next month

The eight-team tour­na­ment takes place from De­cem­ber 7-16 in St John's, An­tigua, from which the top four teams will qual­i­fy for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and hav­ing failed to fin­ish among the top four in the last two edi­tions, Charles is leav­ing no stone un­turn as he con­tin­ues his aim to restor­ing T&T foot­ball to the top of the re­gion­al lad­der.

T&T, the eight-time cham­pi­on, will open its cam­paign against long-time ri­val Haiti on De­cem­ber 7 in Group A fol­lowed by match­es against host An­tigua & Bar­bu­da on De­cem­ber 9, and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic two days lat­er, all at the An­tigua Recre­ation Ground.

On Sun­day at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, the Jan-Michael Williams-cap­tained So­ca War­riors topped their sec­ond round Group Eight four-team qual­i­fiers when they edged Cu­ba 1-0, to avenge a 2-0 loss to the same Cubans two years ago when T&T failed to qual­i­fy from its fi­nal round group.

With the win, T&T end­ed with sev­en points from three match­es and ex­tend its un­beat­en run in the CFU qual­i­fiers to six match­es un­der Charles af­ter a 1-1 draw with St Vin­cent and the Grenadines last Wednes­day and a 3-0 trounc­ing of Suri­name last Fri­day.

Fol­low­ing his team's qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the fi­nals, Charles along with his as­sis­tant coach Derek King and team man­ag­er William Wal­lace held dis­cus­sions about pos­si­ble changes to the team for the fi­nals which are card­ed to get un­der in just over two weeks time.

Com­ing out of the tech­ni­cal meet­ing, the 47-year-old Charles capped 32 times by T&T and scor­er of six goals shared that he has al­ready sent out re­quest to the clubs of Bir­chall, Jones, Ed­wards, Kevin Moli­no, Keon Daniel (Philadel­phia Union/US MLS) and Slo­va­kia-based Lester Pelti­er (Slo­van Bratisla­va).

He said, "These are the guys who we feel can add qual­i­ty and some­thing dif­fer­ent to the squad right now and we ex­pect that with Bir­chall, Moli­no and Daniel, all be­ing out of sea­son, there will be no prob­lem in get­ting them to join the squad.

"With re­gards to Ed­wards, Charles not­ed that it was main­ly be­cause of Ip­swich re­ceiv­ing the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion's re­quest late, that the for­mer So­ca War­riors cap­tain was not re­leased.

"We sent the re­quest to Ip­swich late the last time out, but in fact as we speak now we are send­ing out the let­ters to the clubs of the play­ers and we ex­pect to get replies with the next week.

He added, "We al­so see the need to have Jones in the squad while Pelti­er had in­di­cat­ed to us he will be avail­able for the fi­nal be­cause the Slo­va­kian league is ex­pect­ed to be on a win­ter break dur­ing that time."

Charles, who has been in charge of the team for nine match­es now, with re­sults of six wins, two de­feats (both in friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­als) and a drawn, in­di­cat­ed that he will al­so have the avail­abil­i­ty of Viet­nam-based duo Willis Plaza and Hugh­tun Hec­tor as well as Robert Primus (Ak­tobe/Kaza­khstan), Car­lyle Mitchell (Van­cou­ver White­caps/MLS) and Daneil Cyrus, who is cur­rent­ly away on tri­al, for the fi­nals, mak­ing it a strong group to choose from.

Bir­chall, who has been capped by T&T, 39 times scor­ing four goals last rep­re­sent­ed the So­ca War­riors in the ill-fat­ed 2-1 Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fy­ing loss away to Guyana on No­vem­ber 11, 2011.

Ed­wards, mean­while got his last of 89 caps in the home match with the Guyanese four days lat­er fea­tured in the re­turn fix­ture, the same as Jones, who has 49 ap­pear­ances.

Pelti­er got the last of his 16 caps in a 2-0 loss away to Cana­da on Au­gust 15, the same as Moli­no.

Com­ment­ing on the draw for the fi­nals, Charles ad­vised that start­ing against the Haitians, who are con­sid­ered one of bet­ter teams in the com­pe­ti­tion, will be a chal­lenge.

"We know it will not be an easy ask but as a team we have been im­prov­ing with every match and for the fi­nals we will be look­ing to kick off our ti­tle bid with a bang.

Look­ing ahead to his team's prepa­ra­tions for the tour­na­ment which will co­in­cide with the T&T Pro League Toy­ota Clas­sic com­pe­ti­tion, Charles stat­ed that both par­ties and the clubs in­volved will have to meet as soon as pos­si­ble for the bet­ter­ment of the na­tion­al team.

"The Toy­ota Clas­sic fi­nal is card­ed for De­cem­ber 7 and we are ex­pect­ed to start off the fi­nals cam­paign on that same day and in the build-up we will al­so like an in­crease of train­ing ses­sions, so its some­thing all par­ties in­volved will need to iron out," said Charles.

Group B of the CFU fi­nals, to be played at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um, North Sound, will com­prise two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and five-time win­ner Ja­maica, French Guiana, Cu­ba and Mar­tinique.


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