Foot­ball fans are urged to come out to sup­port its two lo­cal teams as the Ath­let­ic Club of Port of Spain (AC POS) and De­fence Force come face to face in the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup on Thurs­day at the Hasley Craw­ford Sta­di­um at 6 pm.

Ryan Nunes, Club Own­er, AC Port of Spain dis­closed that AC POS Foot­ball Club was re­brand­ed in 2018 af­ter win­ning the TT Pro League, “In 2019 we then took the Un­der-18 youth squad and pro­mot­ed them, so what we are see­ing now are the ma­tu­ri­ty of some of these play­ers, such as John-Paul Rochford and Ma­lik Mieres who were part of that group­ing.

“We have to be pa­tient and sup­port­ive of these young play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly if they have am­bi­tions to move to in­ter­na­tion­al clubs. This will cre­ate a path­way for fu­ture play­ers and as­sist the na­tion­al sys­tem for a per­pet­u­al pool of na­tion­al foot­ballers.”

Since tak­ing over own­er­ship of the Club, Nunes has in­creased the in­take num­bers even from a Se­nior Men’s Team, to in­clude 3 Youth Teams and a Women’s Team. The Women’s team is al­so do­ing well be­ing led by Coach Chris Bai­ley and their cap­tain Ten­isha Palmer in the WOLF league.

He said, “We have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 play­ers from ar­eas such as a Blan­chisseuse, Bel­mont, Bagatelle, Care­nage, Mar­aval, St. Ann’s, Mor­vant and Ari­ma. One of our ob­jec­tives is to sup­port play­ers in par­tic­u­lar ages 18 to 23.”

AC Port of Spain Foot­ball Club was drawn in Group A of the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup along with fel­low Trinidad and To­ba­go club, De­fence Force, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mo­ca FC as well as Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC.

Nunes said he is pleased the De­fence Force Foot­ball Club, a lo­cal TT team has al­so been placed in the Group along­side AC POS, “Out­side of the ri­val­ry, we have a good com­radery with the clubs’ coach­es and ad­min­is­tra­tors, but on the bat­tle­field, we will not be tak­ing any pris­on­ers, es­pe­cial­ly this game. The play­ers are mo­ti­vat­ed af­ter suf­fer­ing de­feat and ul­ti­mate­ly cost us the TT Pre­mier­ship Ti­tle.

“AC POS was ranked first on Match Day 18, but we lost Match Day 22 to the De­fence Force so this game on Sep­tem­ber 28th is where the play­ers must prove them­selves.”

He con­tin­ued, “We may have lost our 3 games, but this par­tic­u­lar game is where the team needs to prove their crit­ics wrong. We know they are ca­pa­ble of re­deem­ing them­selves. The play­ers have put in a great deal of work dur­ing the league and the loss of the TT Pre­mier Cham­pi­onship broke their hearts, along with their fam­i­lies, sup­port­ers and com­mu­ni­ty alike. This game means a lot to the team. This game is go­ing to be a Clas­si­co.”

“We are ask­ing all foot­ball fans and sup­port­ers to come out on Thurs­day 28th Sep­tem­ber at the Hasley Craw­ford Sta­di­um to sup­port the teams.”