NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian

No few­er than 11 T&T in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ballers who ply their pro­fes­sion­al trade in the Unit­ed States Soc­cer League Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion and League One still awaits word on whether or not the 2020 sea­son will come off due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic lock­down.

Last week­end, the USL stat­ed on its usl.com web­site which not­ed that the full-team train­ing mora­to­ri­um for clubs had been ex­tend­ed while nu­mer­ous re­turn-to-play sce­nar­ios were still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

Thus far, Cham­pi­onship and League One clubs, at their op­tion are al­lowed to open out­door fields for non-con­tact train­ing in small groups as well as train­ing rooms for play­er treat­ment.

And among the T&T play­ers at­tached to Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion clubs are An­dre For­tune (North Car­oli­na), Le­ston Paul (Mem­phis 901 FC), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (In­dy Eleven), Du­ane Muck­ette (Mem­phis 901), Shan­non Gomez (Sacra­men­to Re­pub­lic), Tris­ton Hodge (Mem­phis 901 FC), Cordell Cato (Ok­la­homa City En­er­gy FC), Ke­van George (Char­lotte In­de­pen­dence), Noah Pow­der (Re­al Mon­archs), and the duo of Kier­ron Ma­son and Le­land Archer—both of Charleston Bat­tery.

The trio of Je­lani Pe­ters (Toron­to FC II), Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham (For­ward Madi­son) and Luke Singh (Toron­to FC) are at­tached to USL League One clubs.

How­ev­er, in its lat­est re­lease the USL the Unit­ed Soc­cer League said both the Cham­pi­onship and League One full-sided train­ing mora­to­ri­ums have been ex­tend­ed.

The USL re­lease added: “While clubs across both leagues will con­tin­ue to be al­lowed to train in lim­it­ed small group set­tings, the full-sided train­ing mora­to­ri­ums will now co­in­cide with any po­ten­tial adop­tion of a re­turn to play mod­el.”

With re­gards to the com­pe­ti­tion to be played when and if the 2020 sea­son does get go­ing the USL said: “While the league hopes that a de­ci­sion on re­sump­tion of play can be made in the com­ing weeks, all op­tions re­main on the ta­ble for both leagues.

These in­clude re­gion­alised com­pe­ti­tion as well as oth­er al­ter­na­tive struc­tures if a tra­di­tion­al league for­mat is no longer pos­si­ble.”

Look­ing ahead USL not­ed that as from the be­gin­ning of the cri­sis, the league con­tin­ues to par­tic­i­pate in a na­tion­al COVID-19 task force and will not re­sume play un­der any sce­nario un­til it is in align­ment with the rec­om­men­da­tions of that task force, as well as lo­cal and state health au­thor­i­ties.

The USL al­so con­tin­ues to work with the USLPA on COVID-19 man­age­ment, play­er safe­ty and well-be­ing, eco­nom­ic re­lief, and the larg­er col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process.