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Saturday, May 31, 2025

Government looking to broaden eligibility of overseas players

by

Sport Desk
104 days ago
20250216
Kieron Edwards, TTFA president.

Kieron Edwards, TTFA president.

A larg­er pool of se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers will soon be el­i­gi­ble to rep­re­sent T&T’s na­tion­al foot­ball team once pro­posed changes to the law are un­der­tak­en.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Kieron Ed­wards re­cent­ly re­vealed that the amend­ed law would see play­ers over the age of 18, who share re­la­tions with Trinida­di­an grand­par­ents, be al­lowed to play for the So­ca War­riors.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, a pol­i­cy has al­ready been sent by the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice.

Speak­ing dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view on WESN TV, Ed­wards said he hoped the pol­i­cy would be in place in the next few weeks, ahead of T&T’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers in June.

“I would say that we are about two to three weeks away from hav­ing this doc­u­ment be fur­nished to take to Par­lia­ment. They are just re­view­ing it at this point, so I would hope that with­in a cou­ple of weeks, we can have this doc­u­ment, right af­ter Car­ni­val plays, and look to have this law amend­ed in time for the World Cup games in June,” Ed­wards said.

He said ju­nior play­ers were al­lowed to rep­re­sent T&T through that method.

How­ev­er, he said once it is ex­tend­ed to play­ers over the age of 18, it would in­crease the num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers el­i­gi­ble to play for the na­tion­al team.

“So, it’s just around hav­ing grand­parent­age, be­ing able to rep­re­sent and to get a pass­port at any age. We utilised it just re­cent­ly with this Un­der-17 team here, but at the se­nior lev­el we have play­ers, be­cause of some the lev­els of our play­ers at such a young age, they don’t take it up,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

“We have two play­ers right now who are on the Eng­land team that we were close to get­ting. We want to pro­tect what’s go­ing on, but we have a young man from Ar­se­nal who is in the Eng­land youth set-up that we were close to get­ting.”

CMC


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