Shaun Fuentes

They car­ry sim­i­lar hair­styles and some may say they have sim­i­lar fea­tures as a play­er. Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der-20 marks­man Kadeem Corbin pat­terns his game af­ter Ital­ian for­ward Mario Balotel­li. Corbin wants to be like Balotel­li, maybe not by fol­low­ing his on the field an­tics but what he does with the ball.

"Mario Balotel­li is my favourite play­er. That's the man who in­spires me and I try to take in what­ev­er he does on the field. I want to be like him. The way he scores goals and the way he has an im­pact on his team and on match­es, that's how I see my­self. That was me dur­ing the Un­der 20 fi­nals," Corbin said on Tues­day.

Born March 4, 1996, Corbin grew up in Pe­tit Val­ley and start­ed play­ing the game at age six at Har­vard's. He moved on to Sky FC and joined San Juan Jabloteh at age 13. Cur­rent­ly he is with Pro League out­fit St Ann's Rangers and St An­tho­ny's Col­lege.

Cred­it­ing his un­cles, main­ly Bert Bal­four for be­ing his biggest sup­port­ers, Corbin has his sights on play­ing on the Eu­ro­pean stage in five years or so.

"It's go­ing to be tough but I want to be in Eu­rope in five years time or maybe be­fore. Barcelona is my num­ber one team. I just love to see them play. But I think if I can get in­to a club in Eu­rope it will help my de­vel­op­ment and I'll be able to lift my game and come back and do well for the na­tion­al team," he said.

Corbin, who has Jo­evin Jones down as his favourite lo­cal play­er, says his team­mates are the ones who in­spire him on the pitch.

"My team­mates are my biggest in­spi­ra­tion. I think the mind­set of the play­ers is what pushed us to win last week. We be­lieved in our­selves and the team will get bet­ter once we con­tin­ue to pre­pare go­ing in­to the tour­na­ment in Ja­maica," he added.

Cap­tur­ing the Most Valu­able Play­er and top goalscor­er award at the just con­clud­ed Caribbean Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onship, where he led T&T to the ti­tle with five goals, has not left Corbin with his shirt col­lar tucked up­wards. He knows that there is much more to do.

"My game is far from be­ing where it has to be. I have to work on my size and my strength and that will be my fo­cus over the next few months. I like scor­ing goals and help­ing the oth­er guys but I have a lot of work to do be­fore I get to be­ing that top play­er," Corbin said.

He will hope to lead T&T to its third ever Fi­fa Un­der-20 World Cup, next year in New Zealand.

'Jag­gy' joins Phuck­et­FC in Thai­land

For­ward Kendall Jagdeosingh re­cent­ly switched clubs in Thai­land, join­ing Pre­mier Di­vi­sion club Phuck­et FC.

Jagdeosingh who has played for T&T at the youth and se­nior lev­el, spoke of the stan­dard of the league re­cent­ly, say­ing "As for the foot­ball it­self, my im­pres­sion is pos­i­tive. I've made some great friends and met some good peo­ple. I love the food. The weath­er is sim­i­lar to my coun­try, as are the beach­es. The style of foot­ball here is very tech­ni­cal–some­times fast, some­times slow, it de­pends on the team, but over­all it's good."

Jagdeosingh pre­vi­ous­ly played for Chainat FC and Trat FC in Thai­land, hav­ing been based there for the past four years.

"Af­ter play­ing soc­cer pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Amer­i­ca for four years, the op­por­tu­ni­ty came for me to play for TPL's Chainat FC and I took it. I played there for two years in the TPL, then played for Trat FC for the first half of this sea­son, un­til my con­tract end­ed, when I got a call from the man­ag­er of Phuket ex­press­ing their de­light for me to join Phuket FC. The club has big am­bi­tions and I was hap­py with how they ap­proached me, so I de­cid­ed to join," Jagdeosingh added.

Na­tion­al team mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no was among three Or­lan­do City se­lec­tions on the USL PRO all-league teams an­nounced Tues­day.

Li­ons de­fend­er Luke Bo­den and Moli­no were named to the first team, while de­fend­er Brad Rusin was a sec­ond-team USL PRO se­lec­tion.

Moli­no had al­so cap­tured the League's "MVP" and top­scor­er award a week ago for his out­stand­ing per­for­mances for the MLS-bound club.

"It's an­oth­er ac­co­lade that I'm proud of but now we're al­ready look­ing ahead to next sea­son which is go­ing to be a much big­ger deal. We're go­ing to be in the MLS so every­thing in the USL was nice but that's his­to­ry now," Moli­no said.

He will join the T&T lat­er this month for a train­ing camp ahead of the Caribbean Cup and Gold Cup qual­i­fiers at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um on Oc­to­ber 8th, 10th and 12th.

"That's the next big chal­lenge for me. I'm def­i­nite­ly look­ing to make a good im­pres­sion and con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al team dur­ing the Caribbean Cup," Moli­no added.

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Ed­wards has surgery to­day

Car­los Ed­wards will un­der­go surgery to­day to re­pair cru­ci­ate and lat­er­al lig­a­ment dam­age, as well as a rup­tured ham­string mus­cle, suf­fered against Not­ting­ham For­est on Sat­ur­day.

It is like­ly that Ed­wards could be out of ac­tion for up to nine months but Mill­wall man­ag­er Ian Hol­loway is con­fi­dent he will be back in a Mill­wall shirt af­ter that.

"He'll be out for a min­i­mum of nine months - but it will prob­a­bly be 12 months. It was a freak in­jury," Hol­loway told News at Den.

"But apart from the hor­ri­ble, trau­mat­ic in­jury, the sur­geon is very pleased with his knee.

"The joint it­self is as good as any­body's. There is no rea­son why the op­er­a­tion won't work.He's a very in­tel­li­gent and fit boy and he's very ded­i­cat­ed. There's no rea­son why he can't get back play­ing. Every­body is gut­ted for him be­cause he's made a big dif­fer­ence. He's a big part of the squad and very pop­u­lar here."

Shaun Fuentes is di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com