Shaun Fuentes

Mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no is pro­gress­ing with his re­cov­ery from a se­ri­ous ACL in­jury and sub­se­quent surgery in May.

Re­ports are that the Or­lan­do City play­er will re­sume field train­ing in De­cem­ber. He will re­turn to the train­ing field to be­gin run­ning in a straight line and work­ing on his touch­es.

He is on a strict re­hab pro­gramme work­ing dai­ly with a per­son­al train­er as well as the med­ical staff at Or­lan­do City. He is run­ning in the gym and is un­der­go­ing heavy weight train­ing. Word is he is like­ly to re­ceive clear­ance from Or­lan­do to re­turn to play in Jan­u­ary but it could be a bit longer de­pend­ing on his progress.

"It's been com­ing along well but it has been frus­trat­ing at times. I have to be pa­tient but miss­ing games and see­ing my team­mates on the na­tion­al team and the club take the field is not some­thing any play­er likes," Moli­no said.

"But I will not rush this process. The most im­por­tant thing is to get back ful­ly fit and healthy.

"Right now I'm ex­cit­ed to see the progress of the na­tion­al team, I've fol­lowed all the games and I'm in touch with the play­ers reg­u­lar­ly. That helps to keep my spir­it up. I'll be back with them in a few months."

Beach Boys show progress on the sand

T&T's suc­cess at the Lu­cayan Cup Chal­lenge in Ba­hamas last week­end is be­ing viewed as a ma­jor step­ping stone for this coun­try's na­tion­al beach foot­ball team as they look ahead to qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2017 FI­FA Beach Foot­ball World Cup.

The na­tion­al team was in­vit­ed by hosts Ba­hamas to com­pete against gi­ants Mex­i­co and the hosts as they pre­pare for the stag­ing of the World Cup in 2017. And T&T did not dis­ap­point, shock­ing the Mex­i­cans 5-4 in their open­ing game on Sat­ur­day be­fore de­feat­ing Ba­hamas 5-3 the fol­low­ing day to cap­ture the ti­tle.

T&T head coach Ben­ny As­tor­ga at­trib­uted his team's show­ing to com­mit­ment and long hours on the sand.

"This was a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for the guys. Our first World Cup qual­i­fy­ing game a few years ago was against Mex­i­co and we lost and to now come and de­feat them shows that there has been progress over the past two to three years. It's a good feel­ing for us," As­tor­ga said.

The T&T team in­clud­ed play­ers such as Club San­do's Kevon Wood­ley, David Mc­Dougall, Zane Cok­er and Chad Apoo which made it a for­mi­da­ble side for the match ups.

"We have play­ers with a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing been to two Con­ca­caf Fi­nals and the in­ter­est is grow­ing. Hope­ful­ly we can stay to­geth­er and con­tin­ue with the kind of prepa­ra­tions that will help us to keep on im­prov­ing as we head in­to the qual­i­fiers," As­tor­ga said.

David: Team uni­ty is strong

The progress shown by the na­tion­al se­nior men's team over the past six months of so de­serves a fair amount of com­men­da­tion.

Fol­low­ing de­feats to Ja­maica in the Caribbean Cup Fi­nals in Oc­to­ber and then a 1-0 de­feat to Pana­ma with a large­ly home-based team in March, the "So­ca War­riors" have risen to the call, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the dis­mal show­ing in Jor­dan.

Two suc­ces­sive draws with Mex­i­co which pro­vid­ed non-stop ac­tion and en­joy­able goals and then a win away to Pana­ma have pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence that the team is on track but will need to con­tin­ue to plug­ging away head­ing in­to the Con­ca­caf se­mi-fi­nal World Cup qual­i­fy­ing round next month.

De­fend­er Aubrey David, who is based in Kaza­khstan, be­lieves that a strong team uni­ty on and off the pitch is a ma­jor fac­tor in the team's run.

"We have a strong bond. A lot of us have played to­geth­er from the youth teams come up and then with new play­ers that may be com­ing in, we make it our du­ty to make every­one fit it and to learn more about each oth­er on a dai­ly ba­sis, es­pe­cial­ly when we are in camp," David said.

"This jour­ney so far has been a great one. We have our ups and downs but it's all part of the process of build­ing the right team to go for­ward. Play­ers will fight for each oth­er and we have a staff that is go­ing all out to en­sure things are in place.

"There will al­ways be some bit of chal­lenges but so far we have shown that we can over­come them and keep mov­ing for­ward. That is very im­por­tant for us as a team.

"Hope­ful­ly the sup­port will come for us. I think once we con­tin­ue to get the right prepa­ra­tions then beat­ing the best teams in Con­ca­caf is not im­pos­si­ble for us."

Shaun Fuentes is the di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the TTFA. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com