Shaun Fuentes

Fol­low­ing a se­ries of tri­als in Eu­rope over the past three months, tal­ent­ed na­tion­al team mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no has de­cid­ed to re­turn to Amer­i­can club Or­lan­do City. Moli­no signed a new one-year deal with the club last week and will leave Port-of-Spain in a few days to join the club for their pre-sea­son train­ing ahead of the up­com­ing USL (USA Sec­ond Di­vi­sion) sea­son.

Moli­no was named the League's Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP) last sea­son and is a favourite at Or­lan­do. Head coach Adri­an Heath open­ly ex­pressed his de­sire to have the play­er stay at the club when he in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tions to move to Eu­rope, last year.

"It was the best op­tion for me at this time be­cause I've been miss­ing out on play­ing for about two months and Or­lan­do end­ed up giv­ing me a re­al­ly good deal that was bet­ter than some of the of­fers I re­ceived at the clubs in Eu­rope," Moli­no said.

The USL sea­son starts in late March with Or­lan­do's first match at home to Phoenix FC Wolves in April. Moli­no is hop­ing his full re­turn in ac­tion puts him in­to good match form ahead of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in Ju­ly.

"I want to make sure that I am on the na­tion­al team for the Gold Cup. This will be my first Gold Cup and I want to be play­ing reg­u­lar­ly be­fore the team is se­lect­ed," Moli­no said.

"I'm hop­ing to make the best of this sea­son with Or­lan­do and help the club keep on win­ning. I know they want to get in­to the MLS (Ma­jor League Soc­cer) and that's some­thing ex­cit­ing for the club and the fans in Or­lan­do."

Or­lan­do an­nounced last Mon­day that the Rio de Janeiro na­tive Sil­va in­vest­ed in Or­lan­do City, fund­ing the club's share of a pri­vate/pub­licly-fund­ed mul­ti-pur­pose foot­ball sta­di­um in down­town Or­lan­do and fu­ture ac­qui­si­tion of a MLS fran­chise.

Theobald: 'Cali' gun­ning for­back-to-back FA

Na­tion­al mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald ex­pects Cale­do­nia AIA to make life dif­fi­cult for op­po­nent Cen­tral FC in to­mor­row's T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) FA Tro­phy fi­nal at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va from 8 pm.

Theobald re­turned home this week from a tri­al in Fin­land. He's back in train­ing and will be in the squad for the fi­nal.

"Cale­do­nia wants to take the FA for the sec­ond year in a row. The con­fi­dence is high in the camp and the play­ers want to bring it home for the peo­ple of Cale­do­nia. Mor­vant and Laven­tille," said Theobald. "I think we al­so want to do it for the peo­ple who hav­ing a hard time in Sea Lots as well. This vic­to­ry will be for them."

Cale­do­nia head coach Ja­maal Shabaaz echoed those sen­ti­ments, adding: "The peo­ple from the area that Cale­do­nia comes from are in pain and this per­for­mance will be ded­i­cat­ed to them. In the end we ex­pect a good con­test and a good match from Cen­tral FC."

Cen­tral FC has come along steadi­ly since their in­au­gur­al Pro League match a few months ago and head coach Ter­ry Fen­wick will be keen to cap­ture his first ti­tle since do­ing so at Jabloteh. The "Sharks" will be hop­ing to have the 12th man sup­port from the Cen­tral area at the Cou­va venue.

Cato on tri­al at Earth­quakes

At­tack­ing play­er Cordell Cato is on tri­al at MLS club San Jose Earth­quakes and has done suf­fi­cient­ly well to spark some con­tract talk from head coach Frank Yal­lop.

Cato was said to be waived by Seat­tle Sounders at the end of last sea­son and has been in train­ing with Earth­quakes along with fel­low T&T play­er Sean De Sil­va, who the club has un­for­tu­nate­ly said, will not stay on.

Earth­quakes will have to sort out the de­tails of Cato's visa sit­u­a­tion but Yal­lop, along with gen­er­al man­ag­er John Doyle, hope to have a deal worked out soon.

"We'd like to do some­thing (with Cato)" said Yal­lop. "It's more pos­i­tive than neg­a­tive. Un­til play­ers are signed and the league ap­proves every­thing, they're not on the team."

Richards linked to Har­ris­burg

Less than six weeks af­ter be­ing signed to a one-year deal by Philadel­phia Union, na­tion­al un­der-20 de­fend­er Damani Richards was re­leased by the club ear­li­er this month. The news took some by sur­prise in­clud­ing me­dia that fol­lows the Union team.

At a press brief­ing, team man­ag­er John Hack­worth seemed a bit ag­i­tat­ed when asked by re­porters to ex­plain the rea­son to re­lease Richards and two oth­er play­ers.

"It's in­ter­est­ing that we're talk­ing about the pre-sea­son and get­ting ready for open­ing day and you guys are more con­cerned about three guys that are not on our team and not in the pic­ture," Hack­worth said.

"We've had ex­cel­lent com­pe­ti­tion at left back and we'll start this sea­son with three very qual­i­fied play­ers in our hum­ble es­ti­ma­tion. That doesn't mean Damani's qual­i­ties are any less than they were when we talked about him be­fore. But the re­al­i­ty is there are bet­ter play­ers here and you hope I make those de­ci­sions cor­rect­ly," he said.

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