Shaun Fuentes

Jo­evin Jones has been one of the most talked about play­ers in the lat­ter part of the on­go­ing Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) sea­son as he helped Seat­tle Sounders not on­ly reach the play­offs but pro­vid­ed two great as­sists on their 3-0 blow out of Dal­las FC a few days ago.

And now his team­mates are de­scrib­ing him as one of most po­tent wingers in the league.

"I've told him, he has the po­ten­tial to play in Eu­rope, eas­i­ly," team­mate Nel­son Valdez said. "I still think he's play­ing just 50 per­cent of what he can."

Seat­tle head coach Bri­an Schmet­zer added: "I think he is a winger at heart. He's hon­est­ly a very good one-v-one de­fend­er. I think peo­ple don't ex­pect that from him be­cause of his at­tack­ing qual­i­ties, but you don't see a lot of peo­ple run­ning past him. He's def­i­nite­ly a winger at heart, but I think this role suits him."

Jones plays more of an at­tack­ing winger for T&T but is asked to per­form a more de­fen­sive role for Seat­tle.And about thoughts that he's on­ly re­alised 50 per­cent of his po­ten­tial, Schmet­zer sees him po­ten­tial­ly go­ing high­er.

"Keep work­ing. Keep do­ing what he's do­ing," Schmet­zer said. "He has a ton of tal­ent. He's still young. Get­ting used to maybe play­ing at left back for us, when he plays in the mid­field for his na­tion­al team, some of those nu­ances, as you get a lit­tle old­er, you get more ex­pe­ri­enced. You take what games give you."

T&T fans will be hop­ing Jones turns up the heat on jo­e­vi 11 when Cos­ta Ri­ca vis­its for a World Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

Play­ing for T&T a bless­ing,says DC Unit­ed play­er

For­ward Taofik Lu­cas-Walk­er made his de­but for this coun­try's na­tion­al un­der 20 team at the just con­clud­ed Caribbean Cham­pi­onship in Cu­ra­cao. Lu­cas-Walk­er played his part in help­ing the team se­cure qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the CON­CA­CAF Fi­nal round in Cos­ta Ri­ca next year, de­spite the team dis­ap­point­ing­ly los­ing to An­tigua/Bar­bu­da and Bermu­da in its fi­nal two games.

The ex­pe­ri­ence for Walk­er who qual­i­fies to play for T&T as both his par­ents were born here, was a dream come true, he said.

"Suit­ing up for Trinidad and To­ba­go has tru­ly been a bless­ing. It was such an ho­n­our to be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent the coun­try. There is no big­ger ho­n­our in a foot­ball play­er's ca­reer. In ad­di­tion it has giv­en me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove, along with the chance to rep­re­sent my fam­i­ly for the coun­try that I can call home," Walk­er said.

He is cur­rent­ly a se­nior at the George­town Day High School in Wash­ing­ton. He is at­tached to the DC Unit­ed Un­der 18 Acad­e­my as a right winger.

Lu­cas-Walk­er knows T&T has its work cut out in or­der to qual­i­fy for the 2017 FI­FA Un­der 20 World Cup in South Ko­rea but he is ready for the chal­lenge. "I be­lieve that the key to suc­ceed­ing in the Con­ca­caf rounds is know­ing and em­brac­ing every­one's strengths when it comes to what we put on the field.

"The T&T staff did an out­stand­ing job ap­ply­ing our 4-3-3 for­ma­tion and tac­tics to out­smart the op­po­si­tion dur­ing the two week camp in Pana­ma, and even the CFU rounds. ," he said.

Lat­apy ex­cit­ed about Elite youth pro­gramme

For­mer na­tion­al cap­tain and re­cent Un­der 17 head coach Rus­sell Lat­apy is up­beat about the re­cent rev­e­la­tions by the TTFA to im­ple­ment its Elite Youth De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

And the for­mer Boav­ista and Glas­gow Rangers man is an­tic­i­pat­ing the ac­tion­ing of this mas­sive project that will see fo­cus be­ing placed on the Un­der 13 age groups for na­tion­al teams com­ing up through the ranks pri­or to the se­nior lev­el.

"I am ab­solute­ly de­light­ed about this. It has al­ways been my feel­ing that we have a lot of knowl­edge here and tal­ent and we need­ed to give more di­rec­tion and nur­tur­ing to­wards this tal­ent both for play­ers and coach­es. And I think a pro­gramme like this af­fords us that op­por­tu­ni­ty," Lat­apy said.

"My in­cen­tive has al­ways been be­ing able to help the younger ones, to give guid­ance and pass on my knowl­edge and I am hap­py we will be get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so in what is a bit of an eas­i­er way now with the project.

"I am fired about that," Lat­apy con­tin­ued: "It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give a lot of young men that chance to do some­thing with their lives and to help their par­ents, their fam­i­lies. It has a to be a pro­gramme that would need to be well or­gan­ised be­cause there are a lot of kids in this coun­try play­ing foot­ball. And we need it to be con­tin­u­ous. I con­grat­u­late the As­so­ci­a­tion and NL­CB for their vi­sion."