Welsh-based cen­tral de­fend­er James Lester and Eli­jah Cord­ner from Eng­land have been called to the T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team for the com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly clash with Bo­livia on March 15 at the Ra­mon Tahuichi Aguil­era Sta­di­um in San­ta Cruz, Bo­livia.

They are al­so ex­pect­ed to be used for the FI­FA Se­ries, where T&T will face Venezuela on March 27 and then Gabon on March 30 in Uzbek­istan.

Lester is a 19-year-old cen­tre back of Welsh Pre­mier Foot­ball League (Cym­ru Pre­mier) club Llanel­li Town AFC. He worked out with the team yes­ter­day for the first time and will trav­el with the team when they wing out to­mor­row morn­ing. Mean­while, Cord­ner, a de­fen­sive mid­field­er who al­so plays as a cen­tre back, was part of the West Ham Unit­ed Un­der-19 in­ter­na­tion­al pro­gramme.

He re­cent­ly signed on the dot­ted line for Raków Częs­to­chowa in Poland. He is ex­pect­ed to meet the rest of the team in Bo­livia. The team had its fi­nal prepa­ra­tion yes­ter­day at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la, hav­ing had just two days be­fore to train un­der new coach Derek King, who took over from Dwight Yorke af­ter he part­ed ways with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

King said you can ex­pect to see a lot more in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers join­ing the na­tion­al set-up af­ter the Bo­livia match, as they have been bom­bard­ed by re­quests. “Right now, we are fo­cused on the Bo­livia match,” King told the me­dia.

Mon­day (March 9) and Tues­day’s (March 10) prepa­ra­tion fea­tured a core of young play­ers from the coun­try’s Un­der-17 and 20 teams, both of which failed to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth from their re­spec­tive qual­i­fiers in T&T and Cos­ta Ri­ca.

King said he al­so re­cruit­ed a num­ber of good lo­cal play­ers who play in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, such as Jesse Williams, who, at 22 years old, signed for the USA’s Chat­tanooga Foot­ball Club (CFC) in 2023, be­fore his re­cent re­turn to lo­cal foot­ball, where he rep­re­sents AC Port-of-Spain.

King al­so called up strik­er Ja­heim Faustin of San Juan Jabloteh and Lin­dell Sween, the Jabloteh mid­field­er.

Apart from Lester and Cord­ner, King’s team will fea­ture on­ly four in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, with the oth­er two be­ing the Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers duo of An­dre Ram­per­sad, who plays de­fen­sive mid­field­er, and at­tack­er Ryan Telfer, whose team is on pre­sea­son.

“A lot is go­ing on, so I’m ty­ing up some loose ends. I think the team looks good, but it’s now about get­ting them to play with dis­ci­pline, be­cause in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball is a dif­fer­ent thing,” King told Guardian Me­dia Sports. Then, quizzed on whether he felt pres­sured in the job as much as would be ex­pect­ed of him, hav­ing tak­en over from Yorke, King said, “As a coach, I al­ways feel that I can do a good job. I want to build on the work done by the pre­vi­ous coach. We saw that we could have added to the team, so we brought in some young play­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly some from the un­der-17 and un­der-20 teams, and those in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League who have been show­ing promise.”

Jame­son Rigues, vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, said his as­so­ci­a­tion is ful­ly in sup­port of King, who it be­lieves is qual­i­fied and ca­pa­ble of lead­ing the play­ers, as he has done it so many times be­fore in the past. “We’re not think­ing about any oth­er coach right now be­cause we don’t want to cre­ate an un­com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment for the coach. We don’t want to pre-empt what his re­sults would be, but we be­lieve he will do a good job, which could put him in line to be per­ma­nent in the long run,” Rigues ex­plained.