Af­ter rack­ing up 35 ap­pear­ances in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League and three in the UE­FA Con­fer­ence League, Chelsea FC de­fend­er Levi Col­will's 2024-2025 sea­son was ex­tend­ed by a fur­ther five match­es at the month-long FI­FA Club World Cup in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

By any stretch, win­ning the Con­fer­ence League, swift­ly fol­lowed by an im­pres­sive cap­ture of the Club World Cup while clock­ing well over 4,000 min­utes of play­ing time across all com­pe­ti­tions, con­sti­tutes a well-earned hol­i­day on the white-sand­ed, blue-wa­tered beach­es of some ex­ot­ic va­ca­tion des­ti­na­tion usu­al­ly fre­quent­ed by the sport's glob­al su­per­stars. But in­stead, Col­will chose Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Less than two weeks af­ter win­ning the Club World Cup, Col­will, 22, who was born in Southamp­ton, Eng­land, vis­it­ed the home­land of his pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Mar­garet Col­ly­more, on a four-day trip. On Wednes­day, Col­will and his beloved "nan" paid a cour­tesy vis­it to the Fyz­abad Unit­ed Foot­ball Club at Del­hi Road Recre­ation Ground, Fyz­abad.

"I wasn't born in Trinidad, but my nan's ob­vi­ous­ly from Trinidad, and when I come back here, the peo­ple re­mind me so much of my­self, where it's a good vibe. Every­one chills or, as they like to say, every­one limes, and that's how I am as a per­son, so com­ing back is re­al­ly easy for me, and I've re­al­ly en­joyed it so far."

Col­will's vis­it to the Fyz­abad Unit­ed club team, prompt­ed by the fact that his grand­moth­er was born there, was open to young­sters from all parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Over 100 chil­dren took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend the meet-and-greet ses­sion and were al­so put through some light train­ing ex­er­cis­es on the wa­ter­logged field.

The ini­tia­tive was promised as the first of sev­er­al more mean­ing­ful in­ter­ac­tions be­tween Col­will and the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty in the years to come.

He said, "In the fu­ture, I'd love to be able to help in any way I can with the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and try to help the kids – any­thing I can do to make a dif­fer­ence. I am not go­ing to come here and say I am go­ing to change Trinidad be­cause I'm not stu­pid; that's go­ing to take years. But as long as I can make a one per cent dif­fer­ence, that's enough for me."

"To­day we're do­ing some train­ing ses­sions, and I'm just show­ing my face; hope­ful­ly I can in­spire the kids and the youth to try and be bet­ter than me."

"If we can build bet­ter pitch­es and things like this to give them the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly have a chance, that's per­fect.

Ac­cord­ing to Col­ly­more, Col­will's on­ly pre­vi­ous vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go was about nine years ago, when he was just 13, but he has main­tained a strong con­nec­tion to the coun­try of his grand­moth­er's birth, which has fu­elled his de­sire to give back.

"He al­ways want­ed to come back," she gushed.

"To­day is not a one-off be­cause he's got big­ger plans, and he is go­ing to come back. All we know is we have big­ger plans, and we are go­ing to do some­thing for the youths. Be­cause if we can take one or two kids and push them for­ward, it will make a dif­fer­ence to every­body. The com­mu­ni­ty can then say Levi Col­will came to Fyz­abad and in­spired the kids. This is what we want, and it's go­ing to hap­pen."