Shaun Fuentes

Ex­cept for Den­nis Lawrence and Dwight Yorke, you will not find an­oth­er Trinida­di­an on the staff of an Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship club. Of course Yorke and Lawrence are past play­ers, with the for­mer now a coach with the Man­ches­ter Unit­ed Re­serve team and Lawrence on the tech­ni­cal staff of Wigan Ath­let­ic. Oth­ers like John Granville was a goal­keep­er coach at Swin­don Town and lo­cal-based Ter­ry Fen­wick man­aged Portsmouth. Then comes a chap from Ch­agua­nas who de­cides to fur­ther his stud­ies in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy in Eng­land and then choos­es to ap­ply for a job as a bar­tender with Chelsea Foot­ball Club eight years ago. Fast for­ward to present day and Kendall Ram­phal holds a se­nior man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion for Bars and Con­ces­sions with the 2012 Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons League fi­nal­ists.

The 33-year-old Ram­phal doesn't sim­ply pour drinks over the counter for those among the 40,000 plus fans that fre­quent Stam­ford Bridge every week­end. He as­sists oth­er se­nior man­agers in over­see­ing all of the 75 bars and restau­rants at the Sta­di­um, looks af­ter all of Chelsea's for­mal re­cep­tions in­clud­ing their end of sea­son play­ers din­ner and en­sures that all is well for the post-match get to­geth­er in­volv­ing the play­ers and their spous­es and im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly. Def­i­nite­ly a proud 'Tri­ni' in Lon­don who doesn't ac­tu­al­ly have to kick a ball to re­ceive a salary from one of the top clubs in world foot­ball to­day. "It start­ed off with me see­ing the ad in the news­pa­per for the bar su­per­vi­sor role and de­cid­ing to ap­ply for it eight years ago when I first moved to Eng­land. They loved my per­son­al­i­ty and said they'd nev­er had some from Trinidad or the Caribbean work for them and I got the job," Ram­phal re­calls.

"Af­ter five games, they of­fered me the role as a man­ag­er for one of the bars and I haven't looked back since. I had to put my stud­ies to rest be­cause this be­came a full time job which has seen me reach the lev­el of a gen­er­al man­ag­er po­si­tion for all of the club's bars and con­ces­sions," said a proud Ram­phal who en­joyed Chelsea's tri­umph over Barcelona on Tues­day with some 400 fel­low Chelsea staff mem­bers over a big screen at Stam­ford Bridge. That night, he gave yours tru­ly a tour of the home and away dress­ing rooms and the press con­fer­ence rooms via Skype, mak­ing spe­cial men­tion of Di­di­er Drog­ba and a now wor­thy Fer­nan­do Tor­res shirt on the hang­ers al­ready in place for Chelsea's next fix­ture against Queen's Park Rangers on Sun­day. Ram­phal, who re­sides in Wim­ble­don, works at all of Chelsea's home match­es and has at­tend­ed sev­er­al oth­er FA Cup Fi­nals and al­so works at the Wim­ble­don Ten­nis Cham­pi­onships. He al­so has past work ex­pe­ri­ence in the bar busi­ness with Ar­se­nal, Ful­ham and Wem­b­ley.

He cred­its world renowned restau­rant com­pa­ny Levy for his train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence. Levy op­er­ates restau­rants for sev­er­al ma­jor US sport­ing leagues as well as Walt Dis­ney and Chelsea. The Cou­va Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary grad­u­ate missed the 2008 Cham­pi­ons League Fi­nal which Chelsea lost to Man­ches­ter Unit­ed but is set to trav­el to Mu­nich next month for the 2012 fi­nal. "Ro­man Abramovich treats his staff very well. In 2008 he gave tick­ets to all the staff mem­bers and char­tered two planes to Moscow but I couldn't make it. Next month I'm def­i­nite­ly mak­ing up for that." Dwight Yorke's been to a Cham­pi­ons League fi­nal be­fore, win­ning the medal in 1999 and maybe Ram­phal will be the sec­ond Trinida­di­an to put his hands on the Cham­pi­ons League tro­phy in cel­e­bra­tion mode when it re­turns to Stam­ford Bridge next month.

Yorke for leg­ends tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos

Dwight Yorke and Chelsea in­ter­im head coach Rober­to Di Mat­teo are among sev­er­al house­hold Eu­ro­pean names sched­uled to ap­pear at the Bar­ba­dos British Air­ways foot­ball leg­ends in­vi­ta­tion­al at the Kens­ing­ton Oval on May 26 and 27. Eight Eng­lish six-a-side teams will take part in­clud­ing Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Ar­se­nal, Chelsea, Black­burn Rovers Liv­er­pool, Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur, New­cas­tle Unit­ed and a Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ballers As­so­ci­a­tion side. Alan Shear­er, Gaiz­ka Mendi­eta, Den­nis Wise, Di Mat­teo, Andy Cole, Gi­an­fran­co Zo­la, Yorke are just some of the ex-stars who will like line up at the fes­ti­val which is ex­pect­ed to at­tract fans from the UK through spe­cial hol­i­day pack­ages that have been set up. The tour­na­ment is the brain­child of the Bar­ba­dos Tourism Au­thor­i­ty with British Air­ways, the PFA and the Kens­ing­ton Oval among the spon­sors. Sure­ly this is some­thing T&T could con­sid­er host­ing in the fu­ture. Funds from the in­au­gur­al tour­na­ment in 2011 were do­nat­ed to the Na­tion­al Sports Coun­cil Pri­ma­ry Schools Pro­gramme which de­vel­ops youth foot­ball with­in pri­ma­ry in Bar­ba­dos and the Bar­ba­dos FA al­so ben­e­fit­ted from it.

Wat­ford's Ben­nett wants to play for T&T

Eng­lish-born Wat­ford Cen­tre half Dale Ben­nett is still ea­ger to play for this coun­try af­ter ex­press­ing in­ter­est pri­or to its ex­it from the 2014 World Cup cam­paign last No­vem­ber. Ben­nett was among the play­ers ex-head coach Ot­to Pfis­ter planned on vis­it­ing in Eng­land in De­cem­ber but T&T's loss to Guyana put an end to Ben­nett's 2014 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing as­pi­ra­tions. But the 22-year-old whose grand­moth­er is Trinida­di­an is pur­su­ing a T&T pass­port and is mak­ing him­self avail­able for na­tion­al team se­lec­tion. Ben­nett cap­tained Wat­ford's Un­der 18s be­fore sign­ing a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract in 2008. He made his de­but as a 71st minute sub­sti­tute in a 1-0 win over West Ham in the League Cup that year. He has been on loan at Ket­ter­ing Town and Brent­ford but is now back at Wat­ford and is their squad for their Cham­pi­onship League fix­tures hav­ing signed through to 2013. He has 22 ap­pear­ances for Wat­ford. Mean­time, an­oth­er Eng­lish-born play­er Rhys Paul has ex­pressed in­ter­est in join­ing the T&T Un­der 20 team. Paul had been at­tached to Mill­wall but is con­sid­er­ing op­tions for a new club at the mo­ment. Paul's fa­ther is Trinida­di­an. He ex­pressed in­ter­est in join­ing the T&T team back in 2010 but was not looked at by then na­tion­al coach­es. Cur­rent Un­der 20 coach Michael Mc­Comie has al­ready made con­tact with Paul who is hop­ing to try out for the cur­rent Un­der 20 team pri­or to its up­com­ing Caribbean zone U-20 World Cup qual­i­fiers.

Williams nets win­ner for Pol­ish club

Na­tion­al Un­der 23 de­fend­er Mekeil Williams scored his first goal for Pol­ish First League club Pogo Szczecin in a 1-0 win over Flota Winou­j­cie on Sat­ur­day. Williams, for­mer­ly of W Con­nec­tion, net­ted with a glanc­ing down­ward head­er from a left side cor­ner in the 54th minute to help his team to the three points. Over in Slo­va­kia, Lester Pelti­er net­ted his 11th goal of the sea­son in AS Trencin's 2-1 win over Duna­jsk&aa­cute; Stre­da on Sat­ur­day. Pelti­er con­nect­ed from close range in the 53rd but went down in­jured and had to be tak­en off three min­utes lat­er. In MLS ac­tion, mid­field­er Keon Daniel start­ed but was red card­ed in the 75th minute of Philadel­phia Union's 1-0 win over Chivas USA. Scott Sealy came on in the 72nd minute in FC Dal­las' 1-0 loss to Van­cou­ver White­caps.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for the So­ca War­riors/TTFF. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com