Shaun Fuentes

Na­tion­al team de­fend­er Aubrey David could be head­ing back to Cos­ta Ri­can top flight club De­porti­vo Sapris­sa fol­low­ing his loan spell at FC Dal­las in Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer this past sea­son.

Con­tract op­tions for David and a few of his team­mates were not ex­er­cised by Dal­las which means the play­er is like­ly to move on af­ter his loan deal ends this month.

"The sit­u­a­tion as it is right now, is that I could head back to Sapris­sa be­cause I am still un­der con­tract with the club or I could go some­where else on loan de­pend­ing on what op­tions they take up. The sea­son at Dal­las was quite pos­i­tive for me. It was good to get a change in set­tings and to ex­pe­ri­ence a league that is con­tin­u­ing to grow," the 26-year-old David said yes­ter­day.

"But yes, go­ing back to Sapris­sa is a pos­si­bil­i­ty and of course, I have a good re­la­tion­ship there with the team and the fans so it will not be a step down in any­way be­cause its a big club in Con­ca­caf."

David has been in­clud­ed in a Se­nior Team train­ing squad un­der Tom Saint­fi­et ahead of the two up­com­ing Friend­lies against Nicaragua and he is an­tic­i­pat­ing to chance to be part of the new coach's plans.

"It is al­ways an ho­n­our to get se­lect­ed for a na­tion­al team and now al­so un­der the new head coach be­cause some­times you nev­er know what the new boss has in his mind and it means play­ers have to show their val­ue and earn their se­lec­tion. So for me it's the same goal, which is to give my best un­der the new coach and get back to work­ing to­wards that am­bi­tion of qual­i­fy­ing for Rus­sia 2018," David said.

David, who made twelve starts and four­teen ap­pear­ances this sea­son since Ju­ly for Dal­las, pre­vi­ous­ly played for Finnish club FF Jaro and Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed.

Dal­las Women

FC Dal­las Women's team has re-signed Na­tion­al Women's Team play­er Vic­to­ria Swift for a sec­ond sea­son.

Swift was a key mem­ber of the Dal­las team this sea­son that went un­de­feat­ed in South­west Con­fer­ence and won the South­west Con­fer­ence Ti­tle (14-0 record) over­all the team went 15-1 los­ing out to Chica­go Red Star in the play­offs in Chica­go (Quar­ter­fi­nal round). Play­ing cen­ter back po­si­tion, she was a stand­out and and was named as a 2016 WP­SL All-Star.

FC Dal­las coach Ben Wal­drum said Swift has been a key play­er for Dal­las through­out the past sea­son and will be ex­pect­ed to be in­flu­en­tial in their line up in 2017.

"Sign­ing Vicky to our 2017 team was a high pri­or­i­ty for FC Dal­las. Her growth last sea­son was ex­cep­tion­al and she brings a phys­i­cal pres­ence, lead­er­ship qual­i­ties, and a men­tal­i­ty that makes her key to our teams' suc­cess," said Wal­drum.

"Hav­ing Vic­to­ria dur­ing our time with Trinidad & To­ba­go Women's Na­tion­al Team plus last sea­son here with me at FC Dal­las, has been a plus. She has a very good un­der­stand­ing of the tac­ti­cal ap­proach and play­ing phi­los­o­phy that we im­ple­ment here at FC Dal­las. The ex­pec­ta­tion for her is to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op, im­prove, and help lead us in de­fense of our con­fer­ence ti­tle and com­pete for a WP­SL cham­pi­onship," Wal­drum added.

T&T duo Rhea Bel­grave and Karyn Forbes were al­so with Dal­las last sea­son but both were trou­bled by nig­gling in­juries. Bel­grave played five games, while Forbes had mi­nor surgery to re­pair a menis­cus car­ti­lage, ac­cord­ing to Wal­drum.

Hoyte moves

Eng­lish-born de­fend­er Gavin Hoyte has moved to Eng­lish Con­fer­ence Pre­mier side East­leigh. The move was an­nounced yes­ter­day as the play­ers joins "The Spit­fires" on an 18-month con­tract.

The 26-year-old, who had played for the T&T se­nior team, came through the ranks at Ar­se­nal and made a hand­ful of ap­pear­ances for the first team. Dur­ing his time with The Gun­ners he had loan spells at Wat­ford, Brighton & Hove Al­bion, Lin­coln City and AFC Wim­ble­don; be­fore sign­ing for Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge in 2012.

In 2014 he joined Gilling­ham, leav­ing them af­ter one full sea­son to team up with Mar­tin Allen at Bar­net.

Lon­don-born Hoyte rep­re­sent­ed Eng­land at U-17, U-18, U-19 and U-20 lev­el. He is ap­proach­ing 200 first team ap­pear­ances across all four top di­vi­sions in Eng­land.

Con­ca­caf fo­cus­es

CON­CA­CAF in­vit­ed Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tives to par­tic­i­pate in a se­ries of work­shops de­signed to share best prac­tices and tools to fur­ther de­vel­op the game at its XXI­II Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­gress last Sat­ur­day at the JW Mar­riott Mar­quis Ho­tel.

TTFA Pres­i­dent David John-Williams, Vice Pres­i­dent Joanne Salazar and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Justin Lat­apy-George were in at­ten­dance.

The pro­gramme in­clud­ed a pre­sen­ta­tion on the ini­tial steps to im­ple­ment Pres­i­dent Mon­tagliani's ONE CON­CA­CAF Vi­sion for the fu­ture of foot­ball. Through this vi­sion, the Con­fed­er­a­tion will pro­vide prop­er as­sis­tance to its Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions in or­der to im­prove their tech­ni­cal, de­vel­op­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The work­shops pro­gram fea­tured a ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion with spe­cial guest Steven Man­dis, au­thor of the book The Re­al Madrid Way: How Val­ues Cre­at­ed the Most Suc­cess­ful Sports Team on the Plan­et.

This ex­change pro­vid­ed in­sights about best prac­tices on sports or­ga­ni­za­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Man­dis high­light­ed how trans­paren­cy and trust are key to build a stronger brand.

ED­I­TOR'S NOTE

Shaun Fuentes is the Di­rec­tor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.