T&T could soon be rep­re­sent­ed on the in­ter­na­tion­al by an­oth­er mem­ber of for­mer Miss Uni­verse (1998) Wendy Fitzwilliam's fam­i­ly, her son Ailan An­drew Pan­ton.

This af­ter the 16-year-old Pan­ton, her son with for­mer hus­band, Ja­maican sen­a­tor, David Pan­ton im­pressed the T&T Un­der-17 men's foot­ball team coach­ing staff led by Shawn Coop­er dur­ing the res­i­den­tial train­ing camp at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va which ends to­day as prepa­ra­tion con­tin­ues to­ward the Con­ca­caf U-17 Men’s Cham­pi­onship in Guatemala in Feb­ru­ary.

Speak­ing on the eve of the con­clu­sion of the sec­ond stage of the camp which was briefly in­ter­rupt­ed on Christ­mas Eve (Sat­ur­day) to al­low the play­ers to en­joy Christ­mas with their fam­i­lies be­fore it re­sumed on Thurs­day un­til to­day (Sat­ur­day, De­cem­ber 31), Coop­er said he has been rel­a­tive­ly pleased with the play­ers.

"We re­sumed on Thurs­day with a dou­ble ses­sion where we con­tin­ued to look at a cou­ple of play­ers from the USA in terms of see­ing how well they would have adapt­ed to what we are try­ing to do in terms of our style of play and tac­tics, and they were pret­ty okay and al­so adopt­ed very well to the con­di­tions, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing from the very cold weath­er that is fac­ing the USA at the mo­ment."

"They all ad­just­ed well to what we were do­ing and it's now up to us as mem­bers of the coach­ing staff to sit and de­ter­mine which play­ers we will be go­ing with for the tour­na­ment.

The T&T coach said it will with­out a doubt be a dif­fi­cult task to se­lect his fi­nal team, but one that he and his staff em­brace.

"My coach­ing staff and I have a very hard task in se­lect­ing a fi­nal squad for the tour­na­ment not on­ly be­cause of the high com­pet­i­tive lev­el be­tween the play­ers, but al­so Con­ca­caf has re­duced the num­ber of play­ers per team for this age group tour­na­ment to 20 play­ers, so where in the past teams would have se­lect­ed three goal­keep­ers, we will more than like­ly have to go with one less, and then it's a hard choice in terms of the rest of the squad in terms of de­fend­ers, mid­field­ers, and for­wards."

"On­ly on Thurs­day night we had four USA-based play­ers left to re­turn to North Amer­i­ca and off the top of my head, I would say that Je­re­mi­ah Cato, and Tyrell Moore, the lat­ter, the younger broth­er of Shaq Moore who ap­peared for the USA at the just con­clud­ed 2022 FI­FA World Cup in Qatar. Both play­ers are the sons of for­mer T&T play­er Wen­dell Moore.
"I would al­so add to those two, the son of for­mer Miss Uni­verse Wendy Fitzwilliam, Ailan An­drew Pan­ton who has proven him­self to be a very good goal­keep­er, and cer­tain to have a bright fu­ture in the sport along with Lu­ka His­lop, son of for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Neil ‘Sha­ka’ His­lop, who is younger.

He added, "Over­all, the camp was a very use­ful one with about 35 play­ers in­volved in to­tal, with about ten to 12 from over­seas, but un­for­tu­nate­ly last Thurs­day close to ten of them were show­ing signs of flu-like symp­toms and as a pre­cau­tion, we had to send them home to avoid it spread­ing through the rest of the camp to the oth­er play­ers

Look­ing ahead to the re­sump­tion of school next week and the sched­ul­ing of train­ing ses­sions for the lo­cal­ly based play­ers, Coop­er said he plans to ramp up the week­ly ses­sions.

"We are ex­pect­ed to leave for Cos­ta Ri­ca com­ing clos­er to the end of Jan­u­ary where we will play two in­ter­na­tion­al warm-up match­es against that coun­try's Un­der-17 team, but be­fore that, we will ba­si­cal­ly add more week­ly ses­sions to about four a week. So the guys can ex­pect a sched­ule of Tues­days, Thurs­days, Sat­ur­days, and Sun­days un­til we de­part,

T&T will open its cam­paign at the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Cham­pi­onship, which serves as a qual­i­fi­er to the FI­FA Un­der-17 World Cup in Pe­ru next year against Cana­da in Group F of the 20-team tour­na­ment on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2023, Men’s Un­der-17 Cham­pi­onship against at the Es­ta­dio Pen­sati­vo in An­tigua, Guatemala.

The young So­ca War­riors then face the USA in the sec­ond match on Feb­ru­ary 13 be­fore clos­ing out their round-robin group cam­paign against Caribbean ri­vals Bar­ba­dos on Feb­ru­ary 15.

Groups H which is made up of Hon­duras, Haiti, El Sal­vador, and Suri­name will al­so be played at the Es­ta­dio Pen­sati­vo in An­tigua while

Group E which com­pris­es de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and eight-time win­ners Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, host Guatemala, and Cu­ra­cao, and Group G fea­tur­ing Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica, Guade­loupe, and Cu­ba will be based at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional Doro­teo Gua­much Flo­res in Guatemala City.

Af­ter the group stage, the top three na­tions in each group will ad­vance to the knock­out stage, join­ing the four 2022 Con­ca­caf U-17 Men’s Qual­i­fiers (CU17Q) group win­ners: Bermu­da, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Nicaragua, and Puer­to Ri­co.

The round-of-16 match­es will take place on Feb­ru­ary 18, and 19, at both venues, fol­lowed by the quar­ter­fi­nals on Feb­ru­ary 21, and 22 with the semi­fi­nals set for Feb­ru­ary 24, and the fi­nals on Feb­ru­ary 26 in Guatemala City.

All knock­out stage match­es will be played in a sin­gle-match di­rect elim­i­na­tion for­mat and the four semi­fi­nal­ists will qual­i­fy for the FI­FA U-17 World Cup Pe­ru 2023.