Mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no is en­joy­ing the game again. He's tak­ing the field for Or­lan­do City and seems ready to fea­ture at the start of the MLS sea­son.Moli­no came on and as­sist­ed on Or­lan­do's game win­ning penal­ty by Ka­ka in a 2-1 pre­sea­son vic­to­ry over Toron­to and al­so had an as­sist in an­oth­er game win­ner over New York Red Bulls last week.

"A healthy Kevin Moli­no will be a huge ad­di­tion this sea­son. Moli­no looks healthy, is play­ing well, and is work­ing to prove that he can be one of the best wingers in MLS. Moli­no Ma­nia is re­al, and it's spec­tac­u­lar," an ar­ti­cle in the maneland.com stat­ed.

The Or­lan­do Sports Dai­ly al­so high­light­ed Moli­no's re­turn, adding: "Moli­no though is the heart of this team. At least to the sup­port­ers. Ka­ka has the star pow­er and there are plen­ty of play­ers who are bet­ter or come with more pedi­gree.

But no one has the his­to­ry Moli­no has with this team or this fan base. He is the heart–a con­nec­tion to the past and the fu­ture along with a key play­er for the present."

Moli­no al­so be­lieves his progress has been sat­is­fac­to­ry. "I'm be­gin­ning to feel like my­self again. I know it was a sit­u­a­tion where I could not rush back in­to things one hun­dred per­cent but at the mo­ment I feel very ex­cit­ed about be­ing able to play again," Moli­no said. "I was pos­i­tive when I came on the field against New York but at the same time hop­ing that noth­ing goes wrong and to be hon­est, I felt quite good out there.

Hope­ful­ly I can keep it up and just keep get­ting stronger as we head in­to the new sea­son and pos­si­bly I will be back with the na­tion­al team again when the time is right." T&T's next two 2018 World Cup qual­i­fiers are to St Vin­cent/Grenadines on March 25 and 29.

At­tin-John­son ex­plores op­tions

Na­tion­al Women's cap­tain Maylee At­tin-John­son is not ready to hang up her boots at age 29. A com­pet­i­tive dri­ve and a crazy pas­sion for the play­ing could pos­si­bly see her stick­ing around for a few more years. But she is not count­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­ter­ing oth­er ar­eas of the sport. At­tin-John­son has al­ready had man­age­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence on a past na­tion­al women's youth team and re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a course in ref­er­ee­ing which she in­tends to fur­ther.

"I will take some time to re­think my fu­ture be­cause I am not get­ting younger. The FI­FA ref­er­ee­ing pro­gram is some­thing I will def­i­nite­ly look in­to but I re­al­ly can't say ex­act­ly at this time what I will be go­ing in­to," she said af­ter the 5-0 de­feat to the Unit­ed States last Fri­day in the CON­CA­CAF Olympic se­mi fi­nal round qual­i­fi­er.

"But I will be tak­ing the ref­er­ee­ing a bit more se­ri­ous­ly. I am still very pas­sion­ate about the game and I am very com­pet­i­tive so some­times that ham­pers me from ex­plor­ing oth­er things but I will def­i­nite­ly take some time to re­con­sid­er my fu­ture," said the Cen­tral FC mid­field­er.

As to what she hopes to see in terms of the ap­proach for the de­vel­op­ment of women's foot­ball in T&T she added: "For most of us, we made the na­tion­al team at age 15, 16, at a very young age but you are not get­ting that at this present mo­ment be­cause of the poor sys­tem that is in place at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools lev­el.

There needs to be greater in­vest­ment at the grass­roots lev­el so that we can get bet­ter leagues where the girls can start at a younger age and gain the ex­pe­ri­ence. It is about some­one be­liev­ing in the women's pro­gram and putting every­thing be­hind it in or­der for us to com­pete against the best of them."

At­tin-John­son is a grad­u­ate of Ken­ne­saw State Uni­ver­si­ty and Cum­ber­land Col­lege in the USA.

De Four stays ac­tive at Hous­ton elite club

For­mer na­tion­al un­der 17 women's team head coach Stephan De Four is en­joy­ing his role as women's foot­ball coach in Hous­ton. De Four left Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2013 to be­come a di­rec­tor of coach­ing at the Texas Rush club where he coached boys and girls through the ages 13 to 18.

Last year he switched to the Chal­lenge Soc­cer Club where he is a pro­fes­sion­al staff coach with the all-girl club.

The Chal­lenge club al­so par­tic­i­pates in the Elite Clubs Na­tion­al League. (EC­NL) "When I left home in 2013 I came to Hous­ton where I joined the Texas Rush af­ter I linked up with the one of the di­rec­tors. I coached boys and girls through ages 13 to 18 and then I moved over to the Chal­lenge Soc­cer club last year," De Four said. "I haven't stopped. Af­ter the un­der 17s pe­ri­od when I was the head coach, there wasn't much hap­pen­ing and there was a lot of turn over tak­ing place.

I was kind of stag­nant and I just want­ed to keep coach­ing. The coach­es came down to Trinidad from Texas Rush and the op­por­tu­ni­ty came," he added on his de­ci­sion to move to the Unit­ed States."The Chal­lenge club has been one of the top fe­male clubs in Texas and al­so the US. We have a cou­ple play­ers in the na­tion­al pool.

Most of our play­ers get col­lege schol­ar­ships and we have pro­duced na­tion­al team play­ers. I am en­joy­ing it here and I will al­so con­tin­ue to play my part wher­ev­er pos­si­ble in help­ing our pro­gram back home," he added.

Shaun Fuentes

Dir. of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion

(868) 681 5429 (mo­bile) 623 9500 (of­fice)

www.TTFoot­ball.Org

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