Trinidad and To­ba­go’s teenage sen­sa­tion Rio Car­dines has signed an ex­ten­sion with Eng­lish Pre­mier League club Crys­tal Palace that will keep him at the club un­til June 2028.

The 19-year-old de­fend­er joined Palace at the Un­der-16 lev­el in 2022 and went on to sign his first pro­fes­sion­al con­tract with the club in Ju­ly 2024.

He made his first-team de­but ear­li­er this cam­paign in Palace’s UE­FA Con­fer­ence League vic­to­ry over Dy­namo Kyiv, be­fore mak­ing a sub­sti­tute ap­pear­ance in the EFL Tro­phy win against Liv­er­pool at An­field.

Car­dines fea­tured in every Un­der-21s fix­ture he was el­i­gi­ble for dur­ing the 2024/25 sea­son, scor­ing twice and reg­is­ter­ing one as­sist in 20 ap­pear­ances.

The full-back has al­so earned 11 se­nior caps for Trinidad and To­ba­go. He fea­tured in last sum­mer’s Gold Cup and re­cent World Cup qual­i­fiers. Dur­ing the March in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow, he as­sist­ed both goals in a 2-2 draw with Gabon.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on WESN TV’s Face of Sports pro­gramme on Wednes­day, Car­dines said he was look­ing for­ward to im­prov­ing his skills at the club.

“It feels amaz­ing and I’m re­al­ly grate­ful for the trust that the club has in me and it mo­ti­vates me even more to keep push­ing and de­liv­er my best and hope­ful­ly bring more suc­cess to the team.

“I’d just like to thank every­one in Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­al­ly for all the sup­port and the be­lief, it re­al­ly does pow­er my dri­ve every day and all I can promise is to keep giv­ing my all and mak­ing them proud,” Car­dines said.

“…I still think that I have a long way to go, but it’s all about stay­ing con­nect­ed to my roots, keep­ing close to my fam­i­ly, just to re­mind my­self why I start­ed and just fo­cus on the process and not what’s just to come.”

Acad­e­my Di­rec­tor, Gary Is­sott, said he was ea­ger to con­tin­ue work­ing with Car­dines.

“Rio has gone from strength to strength since ar­riv­ing at the club. He’s pro­gressed re­al­ly well through the Acad­e­my, earned op­por­tu­ni­ties around the first team, won se­nior caps for his coun­try, and con­tin­ued to make a strong con­tri­bu­tion for our Un­der-21s.

“I am con­fi­dent he will keep pro­gress­ing for the rest of the sea­son and be­yond,” Is­sott said.

CMC