Shaun Fuentes

Ataullah Guer­ra will be seek­ing to brave the con­di­tions as he con­tin­ues his jour­ney as a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller, out from the stream of the East Dry Riv­er in Laven­tille and in­to the cold of Rovanie­mi, Fin­land.

The 'Dry Riv­er' has been known as the birth­place of leg­ends and sto­ries and Guer­ra sure­ly has to be one of the fresh sport­ing tal­ents com­ing from there to en­ter the Eu­ro­pean foot­ball stage with the am­bi­tions of mak­ing some kind of mark in the sport­ing are­na.

For at least the past six years, the high­ly skil­ful and tal­ent­ed mid­field­er has teased and tor­tured many op­pos­ing lo­cal play­ers, fi­nal­ly set­tling in­to the na­tion­al team that fin­ished sec­ond at the 2012 Caribbean Cup. With two goals in 20 ap­pear­ances for T&T dat­ing back to 2008, Guer­ra will aim to ce­ment a spot in the team for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in Ju­ly. He hopes his six-month loan spell with Finnish Pre­mier League club Rovaniemen Pal­loseu­ra (ROPS) will turn him in­to a more com­plete play­er for the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

"I'm back here at ROPS and I know this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty that I have to make the best of. I've heard sto­ries of oth­er re­al­ly tal­ent­ed play­ers from my coun­try that came to Eu­rope and couldn't make it in the con­di­tions. But this is my on­ly chance now," Guer­ra said on Tues­day.

"The con­di­tions are not nice at all. It's very cold and I have to do every­thing pos­si­ble to keep my body warm and to adapt but I in­tend to work hard and see where it takes me," Guer­ra added.

Guer­ra's team­mates in­clude El Sal­vador na­tion­al team de­fend­er Vic­tor Tur­cios as well as Finnish in­ter­na­tion­al Tuom­ma Kononen and Niger­ian trio Mbachu Emenike, Ndu­ka Al­i­son and Faith Obilor.

"The team is a good one and foot­ball is pop­u­lar here like any­where else in Eu­rope. I am hap­py to be in a place where foot­ball is a big deal," the 25-year-old Guer­ra said.

The Cale­do­nia AIA play­er, for­mer­ly of San Juan Jabloteh, should be com­fort­able in the town of Rovanie­mi. The city has a num­ber of ho­tels and restau­rants lo­cat­ed both in the cen­tre and on the out­skirts. How­ev­er, be­cause of its lo­ca­tion on the Arc­tic Cir­cle, Rovanie­mi has a sub­arc­tic cli­mate with short, mild sum­mers and very cold and snowy win­ters with an av­er­age an­nu­al tem­per­a­ture of 0.9 �C, and snow stays on the grounds 175 days a year on av­er­age. Guer­ra is cer­tain to ap­pre­ci­ate the sum­mer con­di­tions in Mi­a­mi when he re­turns to join the T&T team for the 2013 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup

TTFF pres grate­ful in hard times

As he con­tin­ues to make at­tempts to steer the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) clear of its nu­mer­ous stum­bling blocks, TTFF pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee re­mains grate­ful to the Min­istry of Sport and At­lantic LNG for their re­cent sup­port to­wards the or­gan­i­sa­tion's pro­grams.

The min­istry has been fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the se­nior and men's un­der-17 teams as well as the women's team while At­lantic has been chief spon­sors of a coach­ing pro­gramme for pri­ma­ry schools through­out the coun­try which is be­ing over­seen by tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal. That course will pro­vide sup­port to coach­es and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers from over 200 pri­ma­ry schools.

"We have to be ever so grate­ful for the sup­port of the min­istry, the Sportt Com­pa­ny and the likes of At­lantic LNG and some of our oth­er cor­po­rate part­ners who have tried to help us through this pe­ri­od," Tim Kee said.

"The pri­ma­ry schools pro­gramme is one which we be­lieve will bring us ben­e­fits in the fu­ture and we thank At­lantic for part­ner­ing in this ef­fort. While more sup­port is al­ways wel­comed, and while we con­tin­ue to work hard to achieve means of suc­cess, we hope that our part­ner­ships can con­tin­ue in a mean­ing­ful way and that our na­tion­al teams, our play­ers, both youth and se­nior and our coach­es and of­fi­cials can be af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ful­fil am­bi­tions and bring recog­ni­tion and de­light to our coun­try," he added.

Mat­u­rana es­capes se­ri­ous in­jury

Cel­e­brat­ed Colom­bian foot­ball coach and ex-T&T na­tion­al coach Fran­cis­co Mat­u­rana es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury when his car crashed late Sun­day in the north­ern city of Medellin.

Mat­u­rana, who led T&T dur­ing part of the 2010 World Cup cam­paign, crashed in­to an­oth­er ve­hi­cle, but suf­fered on­ly mi­nor in­juries.

"The ac­ci­dent taught me many lessons. I was go­ing to over­take and lost con­trol of the car," ex­plained Mat­u­rana.

"Wear­ing a seat­belt is im­por­tant. Luck­i­ly it was a day off (Sun­day), imag­ine if it had been a reg­u­lar day! I would have crashed in­to all the cars, like in the movies," Mat­u­rana said, ac­cord­ing to El Colom­biano dai­ly's web­site.

Mat­u­rana was ad­mit­ted in­to a hos­pi­tal in Medellin for rou­tine tests.

"What can we learn from the things that hap­pen to us? Some­times speed is not a good com­pan­ion."

Mat­u­rana, 64, who was re­cent­ly the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Colom­bian FA, al­so led teams as Atleti­co de Madrid (Spain), as well as Colom­bia's Once Cal­das, Atleti­co Na­cional, Amer­i­ca de Cali and Mil­lonar­ios, among the na­tion­al teams of Colom­bia, Ecuador, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pe­ru and T&T.

Skhy FC re­turn from Dal­las Cup

Lo­cal acad­e­my Skhy FC re­turned from the 2013 Dal­las Cup last month af­ter end­ing the group phase with three de­feats in the un­der-13 cat­e­go­ry.

The lo­cal out­fit, which has made it their busi­ness to take lo­cal play­ers to the pres­ti­gious Con­ca­caf youth tour­na­ment on an an­nu­al ba­sis, suf­fered a 4-0 loss to Ar­se­nal FC of Cal­i­for­nia, 3-0 to RCL Mon­ter­rey of Mex­i­co and 5-0 to EDP TIP of East Brunswick. They al­so lost 4-0 to Whitakere City FC of Auck­land in an open­ing 60 minute scrim­mage.

Gen­er­al­ly though, the out­ing was a seen as a ben­e­fi­cial ex­pe­ri­ence to the youth play­ers who stayed at the homes of lo­cal foot­ball fam­i­lies (Home­s­tay pro­gram) in Dal­las.

The Dal­las Cup, spon­sored by Dr Pep­per re­ceived live tele­vi­sion ex­po­sure on Time Warn­er Ca­ble and in­clud­ed sev­er­al top teams such as Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, La Galaxy, Ful­ham and Club Amer­i­ca among an­oth­er 100 teams.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for the So­ca War­riors/TTFF. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Pro­look2006