Na­tion­al se­nior men's de­fend­er Ke­ston Julien has a 50/50 chance of fea­tur­ing for reign­ing Moldovan cham­pi­ons FC Sher­iff Tiraspol when the team kicks off its Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons League (CL) Group Stage de­but on Wednes­day.

FC Sher­iff, the record 19-time do­mes­tic win­ners, will open its Group D se­ries against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donet­sk at the Sher­iff Sta­di­um, Tiraspol, Moldo­va from 12.45 pm.

Should the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al fea­ture, he will join an il­lus­tri­ous list of T&T play­ers to have played in the Cham­pi­ons League. They in­clude David Nakhid, Dwight Yorke, Mar­vin An­drews, Rus­sell Lat­apy, Sha­ka His­lop, and Khaleem Hy­land, the last of them in the 2011/2012 sea­son with Bel­gium’s Rac­ing Genk.

In the oth­er match in Group D, Ital­ian cham­pi­on In­ter Mi­lan is at home to record 13-time Eu­ro­pean win­ners Re­al Madrid of Spain from 3 pm.

Last month, Sher­iff Tiraspol se­cured their first-ever pas­sage to the group stages in five at­tempts cour­tesy of a 3-0 ag­gre­gate win over Croa­t­ia’s Di­namo Za­greb. This af­ter FC Sher­iff won the first-leg 3-0 at home and then bat­tled to a 0-0 draw in the sec­ond leg to reach the 32-team main draw Cham­pi­ons League com­pe­ti­tion.

How­ev­er, Julien, a for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege has not fea­tured for the club since com­ing off in­jured in the team’s first-leg win over the Croa­t­ians and is un­cer­tain to fea­ture.

This af­ter the 22-year-old Julien suf­fered a ham­string in­jury eight min­utes in­to the sec­ond half of the first-leg win and was re­placed by Brazil­ian Fer­nan­do Con­stan­za has made the po­si­tion his own since then.

FC Sher­iff Tiraspol has on­ly played three match­es since Julien suf­fered the in­jury in late Au­gust with the T&T play­er on­ly mak­ing a re­turn to the team’s bench in their last out­ing on Sun­day last.

De­spite be­ing un­der­dogs for to­day’s CL en­counter, Julien and his team­mates will be buoyed by back-to-back wins in their do­mes­tic league, both 2-0 tri­umphs while Shakhtar de­feat­ed ri­vals Olimpik Donet­sk 2-0 on Sat­ur­day to stretch their un­beat­en run to four match­es.

First­ly, they blanked FC Balti on Au­gust 28 fol­lowed by a sim­i­lar score­line against FC Petrocub Hinces­ti on Sun­day.

With the back-to-back vic­to­ries over the sec­ond and third places teams on the eight-team ta­ble re­spec­tive­ly, Sher­iff moved up to the fourth spot with 12 points from five match­es, eight be­hind lead­ers Mil­sa­mi who have played three match­es more. Petrocub Hinces­ti is sec­ond with 18 points fol­lowed by FC Balti, with 14.

Fol­low­ing its CL de­but, the team will re­turn to league play on Sat­ur­day away to fifth place Zim­bru Chisin­au, who has ten points.

In the Third Round of the CL qual­i­fiers, FC Sher­iff Tiraspol edged Ser­bia's Red Star Bel­grade 2-1 on ag­gre­gate while Di­namo Za­greb al­so qual­i­fied, 2-1 on ag­gre­gate against Poland's Legia War­saw.

FC Sher­iff had pre­vi­ous­ly whipped Ar­men­ian FC Alashk­ert 4-1 on ag­gre­gate while Red Star Bel­grade trashed Kaza­khstan’s Kairat Al­maty 6-2 on ag­gre­gate.

When CL qual­i­fi­ca­tion kicked off in ear­ly Ju­ly FC Sher­rif Tiraspol swept past KF Teu­ta Dur­res 5-0 on ag­gre­gate, and Alashk­ert got past Con­nah’s Quay No­mads 3-2 on ag­gre­gate.

Julien, who last rep­re­sent­ed T&T against the Ba­hamas in the failed Qatar FI­FA World Cup 2022 cam­paign, is com­ing off cap­tur­ing his first ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al ac­co­lade with Sher­iff.