Un­capped ver­sa­tile mid­field­er Nick De Leon, son of one of T&T's most cel­e­brat­ed play­ers Leroy De Leon, is among six for­eign-based play­ers in­vit­ed to fea­ture in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against a for­mi­da­ble South Amer­i­can chal­lenger in Pe­ru, which is sched­uled to be played on Feb­ru­ary 6, at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, from 8 pm. De Leon, 22, cur­rent­ly plays for Amer­i­can MLS club, DC Unit­ed. The five oth­er play­ers in­clude Eng­land­based pair Ken­wyne Jones (Stoke City, Eng­land), a for­mer cap­tain, and Car­los Ed­wards (Ip­swich Town) as well as Khaleem Hy­land (Genk, Bel­gium), Dar­ryl Roberts (Sam­sun­spor, Turkey) and Jl­loyd Samuel (Es­tegh­lal, Iran). The full squad, which oth­er­wise in­cludes pri­mar­i­ly home-based play­ers, is ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced by the end of next week.

A re­turn match against Pe­ru, along with an­oth­er test­ing away fix­ture against South Ko­rea, is al­so like­ly to be staged, but the two match­es are yet to be fi­nalised. The match­es will be used by co-head coach­es Hut­son Charles and Ja­maal Shabazz as full warm-up match­es for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup com­pe­ti­tion, which takes place in the Unit­ed States in Ju­ly. Pe­ru and T&T both bat­tled in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, in 2006 (pre-World Cup) un­der then coach Leo Been­hakker, which re­sult­ed in a 1-1 draw. The Pe­ru squad in that en­counter con­sist­ed pri­mar­i­ly of play­ers based in their home coun­try.

How­ev­er, sev­en years lat­er, lo­cal fans will have the chance to get a glimpse of sev­er­al Eu­rope-based Pe­ru­vian foot­ballers who are house­hold names, in­clud­ing Bay­ern Mu­nich's Clau­dio Pizarro, Shalke's Jef­fer­son Far­fan, Genoa's Juan Manuel Var­gas as well as Brazil­based Pao­lo Guer­rero (Corinthi­ans). On­ly one play­er from Pe­ru's squad played in the friend­ly in 2006– Al­ber­to Ro­driguez. Adults will pay an en­trance fee of $100, while chil­dren un­der the age of 16 may en­ter free of charge. The friend­ly was of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced yes­ter­day, when the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) held a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's. The con­fer­ence, which fea­tured the main speak­er in fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, who in­sist­ed that he and his ex­ec­u­tive were mak­ing every stride in the re­brand­ing of the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball.

The first draft of a re­form of the TTFF's con­sti­tu­tion, which he called for pri­or to his (un­op­posed) elec­tion, is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed in two weeks, with ma­jor stake­hold­ers be­ing called to re­view the doc­u­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Tim Kee, an in­for­mal tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee has been set up in the form of three for­mer na­tion­al play­ers in De Leon (Leroy), Ever­ald "Gal­ly" Cum­mings and Sel­ris Fi­garo, who are not re­ceiv­ing of­fi­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion, but will work with the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, Corneal, in an ad­vi­so­ry role. Tim Kee al­so re­vealed that the fed­er­a­tion has been in talks with po­ten­tial spon­sors in­clud­ing Ad­mi­ral (who he says tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal has a re­la­tion­ship with), as well as Puma and Adi­das, the lat­ter hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly had an ap­par­el con­tract with TTFF.

Even the lo­go of the fed­er­a­tion may be re­designed with the help of a pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools' com­pe­ti­tion. T&T's friend­ly ver­sus South Ko­rea, of which a date and venue are yet to be con­firmed, will be fund­ed in terms of air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion by the Asians. In re­la­tion to a let­ter writ­ten to Fi­fa and Con­ca­caf from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of 13 play­ers de­mand­ing pay­ments for funds promised to them for their par­tic­i­pa­tion at the World Cup in 2006, Tim Kee said he has spo­ken to one of the play­ers, Brent San­cho, and will do so again with­in a week. He ad­vised that the TTFF is not in a po­si­tion to re­pay the debts and the process of liq­ui­da­tion will ac­com­plish very lit­tle. He added, how­ev­er, that he has been in con­tact with the head of Con­ca­caf, who ad­vised that he ap­proach Fi­fa.

Tim Kee said that Con­ca­caf was ac­com­mo­dat­ing to the strug­gles of TTFF, and the re­gion­al body along with Fi­fa were com­mit­ted to aid­ing in pos­i­tive changes with­in the lo­cal game. The Feb­ru­ary 6 friend­ly against Pe­ru has been spon­sored by the Min­istry of Tourism at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $500,000. If the cost of the friend­ly is less than es­ti­mat­ed, a cheque will be writ­ten for the dif­fer­ence and di­rect­ed back to the min­istry, ac­cord­ing to Tim Kee.