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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

The Pro Look

Mitchell: No fear for Messi

by

20140528

It's un­doubt­ed­ly set to be the biggest in­ter­na­tion­al match of his ca­reer and sim­i­lar­ly for some of his team­mates in the T&T squad when they face off with Ar­genti­na on Wednes­day in Buenos Aires. But ask Car­lyle Mitchell if he's hav­ing sleep­less nights and he puts a smile across his face.

"Lose sleep over fac­ing Li­onel Mes­si and (Ser­gio) Aguero? No way," Mitchell said af­ter spend­ing the first cou­ple nights at the Radis­son Trinidad with his team­mates since join­ing the camp this week.

Mitchell, now at­tached with Van­cou­ver White­caps in the Amer­i­can MLS, says there is a lot of talk back at his club about lit­tle T&T fac­ing gi­ants Ar­genti­na.

"A lot of the guys have been talk­ing about it. Some wished me well and oth­ers ob­vi­ous­ly think we are go­ing to have a very hard time. But as a foot­baller, you learn to pre­pare for these things and I can han­dle it. I've nev­er backed down from a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge and I think all the play­ers in the squad are anx­ious­ly wait­ing match­day be­cause they all want to play against some of the best in the world. We have our goals set on win­ning the Caribbean Cup and mak­ing it to the Gold Cup and qual­i­fy­ing for an­oth­er World Cup. This game next week is just a part of the puz­zle," Mitchell said.

T&T is skip­pered by Ken­wyne Jones and de­parts for Buenos Aires on Sat­ur­day night. They will face the Ar­gen­tines at the Es­ta­dio Mon­u­men­tal and Iran at the Corinthi­ans Sta­di­um in Sao Pao­lo on June 8. Al­so trav­el­ing on the char­ter flight on Sat­ur­day will be a T&T cul­tur­al del­e­ga­tion and lo­cal fans. Per­sons in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing the pack­age can still do so via www.nis­sichar­ters.com. Groups of four or more per­sons now have ac­cess to the pack­age at TT$10,000 per per­son in­clu­sive of 4-night stay at the Mar­riott Ho­tel, round trip air trav­el, city tour and added at­trac­tions, ground trans­porta­tion, fan pack and match tick­et.

Per­fect home­com­ing­for Scot­land

Less than three days af­ter lead­ing Hamil­ton to one of their great­est achieve­ments in Scot­tish foot­ball, for­mer na­tion­al for­ward Ja­son Scot­land was on a jet back to Port of Spain to kick­start his off­sea­son break.

Scot­land showed up at na­tion­al team train­ing on Tues­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo to wit­ness the ses­sion and wish some of his past team­mates well in the two up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al games against Ar­genti­na and Iran.

"It's a great time to be back home be­cause the sea­son had a per­fect end­ing for me, " said Scot­land, who net­ted in reg­u­la­tion time against Hi­bs on Sun­day.

"I ac­com­plished what I want­ed to which was to get Hamil­ton back in­to the Pre­mier­ship in Scot­land and the man­ner in which we did it was amaz­ing."

The for­mer De­fence Force and Wigan Ath­let­ic for­ward is set to re­new his deal with the club af­ter help­ing them push Hi­bern­ian out of the top flight.

"We were con­fi­dent head­ing in­to the sec­ond leg even though we were 2-0 down af­ter the first one. But we took care of busi­ness. This is a great feel­ing. I mean, noth­ing can re­al­ly com­pare to beat­ing Bahrain and get­ting to the World Cup but this has to be among the biggest high­lights of my ca­reer."

De­spite be­ing able to un­der­go train­ing camps in South Africa and Aus­tria over the past month, Iran seems to be far from hap­py with its prepa­ra­tions for the 2014 Brazil World Cup fi­nals which clos­es with a train­ing match against T&T in Sao Pao­lo on June 8.

Mo­ham­mad Javad Zarif, the Iran for­eign min­is­ter, vis­it­ed an Iran prac­tice ses­sion this month and tweet­ed a pho­to with the cap­tion: "Thrilled to meet our boys on field. Asked them to do their best to se­cure vic­to­ry in Ju­ly, they asked me the same," re­fer­ring to the tour­na­ment co­in­cid­ing with a dead­line to re­solve the dead­lock over Iran's nu­clear pro­gramme.

Re­ports stat­ed that The gov­ern­ment-run Iran foot­ball fed­er­a­tion has said the short­age of funds for the team's prepa­ra­tions was be­cause the nu­clear-re­lat­ed sanc­tions pre­vent­ed it from col­lect­ing US$300,000 (Dh1.1 mil­lion) from in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sors.

"If we plan a good prepa­ra­tion pro­gramme for the team in ac­cor­dance with re­al­i­ty, then we can ex­pect to go to the sec­ond round," their head coach Car­los Queiroz said, still op­ti­mistic that his team can man­age a good show­ing de­spite al­so ex­press­ing his con­cerns over their less than ide­al prepa­ra­tions.

Iran has nev­er pro­gressed be­yond the group stage in its three pre­vi­ous ap­pear­ances in the tour­na­ment. It kicks off its 2014 cam­paign on June 16 against Nige­ria be­fore play­ing Ar­genti­na, and Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina.

Moli­no named in USL­Team of the week

T&T mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no was named in the Unit­ed States Soc­cer League PRO named its Team of the Week for Week 10 of this sea­son on Tues­day. Moli­no's hat­trick led the Li­ons to a 3-1 vic­to­ry against the Char­lotte Ea­gles in a re­match of the 2013 USL PRO Cham­pi­onship.

Al­ready in the mid­dle of a ca­reer sea­son for the Li­ons, Moli­no con­tin­ued to shine as he scored twice in the first half and again in the sec­ond against the Ea­gles. The open­ing goal in the 11th minute came off a re­bound from fel­low Team of the Week se­lec­tion Bryan Burke, and the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al scored again 20 min­utes lat­er be­fore a crisp first-time fin­ish of Mikey Lopez's cross with 16 min­utes to go capped an­oth­er stand­out per­for­mance.

Moli­no now leads USL PRO with eight goals, but is be­ing hot­ly pur­sued in the race for the Gold­en Boot by two oth­er Team of the Week se­lec­tions in Rich­mond Kick­ers' George Davis IV and LA Galaxy II's Chan­dler Hoff­man, who both sit one back with sev­en.

"It's an ho­n­our again to be named in the team of the week. I'm hap­py be­ing top­scor­er at the mo­ment and I hope I can keep the mo­men­tum. I'd like to help Or­lan­do main­tain their win­ning form as well. But for me the next few days my fo­cus will be on the na­tion­al team of T&T for the games against Ar­genti­na and Iran," Moli­no said.

Shaun Fuentes is the di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the TTFA. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com


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