Dutch leg­end Ru­ud Gul­lit in­clud­ed a vis­it to the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) as part of his four-day sched­ule last week as he led the Hol­land/Bel­gium World Cup bid team to Port-of-Spain. The for­mer AC Mi­lan stand­out, apart from lec­tur­ing to lo­cal coach­es dur­ing a coach­ing course at the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, ac­com­pa­nied some of his for­mer Dutch team-mates in­clud­ing Aron Win­ter, Pierre van Hooi­j­donk and Rob Witchge on a vis­it to the YTC Com­plex on Thurs­day. They played an ex­hi­bi­tion match against a YTC team as well as toured the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Bid me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer Rob De Leede, the tour of the com­plex changed the mood of the Hol­land/Bel­gium All Stars who a day ear­li­er had won an­oth­er match 6-4 against a T&T Leg­ends team.

Gul­lit said: "It was a mar­velous ex­pe­ri­ence we were quite pleased to be here and to get a bit of what goes on in here. I hope the kids re­alise it is bet­ter to stay away from here. "In gen­er­al we were hap­py to vis­it Trinidad and Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er met with us and gave some en­cour­ag­ing ad­vice with re­gards to our bid and we are grate­ful for this," Gul­lit added.

Re­mem­ber­ing Mick­ey Trot­man

Sev­er­al for­mer na­tion­al and cur­rent play­ers will come to­geth­er on Sun­day at the Pin­to Recre­ation Ground for a day of ac­tiv­i­ties in mem­o­ry of the late Mick­ey Trot­man. Trot­man, broth­er Stephan and friend Tes­sa Moses, lost their lives in a trag­ic ac­ci­dent on Oc­to­ber 3, 2001, and the all-day foot­ball fun day has been held every year since his pass­ing. Close friend Stern John is cur­rent­ly back home and is an­tic­i­pat­ing an­oth­er good turn out on the day with sev­er­al well known busi­ness­es con­tribut­ing to the af­fair. There is al­so a pe­ti­tion to have the Pin­to Road Recre­ation Ground re­named af­ter Trot­man. John re­calls how af­ter a train­ing ses­sion with Not­ting­ham For­est the morn­ing of Trot­man's death, he re­turned to the lock­er room and saw 57 missed calls on his mo­bile phone and knew some­thing was wrong.

"Some­thing wasn't right and I didn't want to re­turn the call," John re­called. It turned out that calls were flood­ed to his phone in an at­tempt to break the night­mare news. "But time heals and even though we still? miss Mick­ey a whole lot, we know he's here with us in spir­it and we will keep that spir­it alive with hope­ful­ly an­oth­er suc­cess­ful day in mem­o­ry of him on Sun­day." Al­cons FC will meet Matu­ra FC from 4 pm, and Cool It FC, the old team of the Trot­man broth­ers, will face the Strike Squad from 6 pm. Trot­man would have been 36 on Oc­to­ber 21. John, mean­time, is still re­cov­er­ing from a torn an­te­ri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment (ACl) surgery and is like­ly to start back train­ing in De­cem­ber with a? pos­si­ble re­turn to the Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) on the cards.

Jones says he has lit­tle to prove

With four goals in as many match­es and sky high con­fi­dence at the mo­ment, Stoke City strik­er Ken­wyne Jones says he doesn't have to prove to him­self nor any­one else what his ca­pa­bil­i­ties are. Jones was di­rect­ing his com­ments at crit­ics in­clud­ing Sun­der­land boss Steve Bruce who felt the big strik­er had to re-ig­nite his ca­reer by scor­ing goals. Jones though, al­ways a con­fi­dent play­er from his days at the Un­der 17 lev­el, is cer­tain that he has his best years ahead of him. "You can be the best play­er in the world but some­times you have no con­fi­dence. You're not able to ap­ply that or things aren't go­ing right in your en­vi­ron­ment.

"Every­one has their po­ten­tial but it's still to be seen what I can do. I'm 26 next month, not 35, so I have my best years in front of me. Some­times I maybe don't give the per­for­mance I should, but no-one gives it every sin­gle time. "Some­times I give the per­for­mance and peo­ple don't see it. That's foot­ball. Every­one has their opin­ions," Jones told the Dai­ly Mail. "To my­self I don't have a lot to prove, I have a lot to do. For a lot of peo­ple I have a lot to prove but I'm not re­al­ly fo­cus­ing on the oth­er peo­ple. No mat­ter what you do in life you can't please every­one." Jones net­ted in Stoke's 2-1 win over New­cas­tle Unit­ed on the week­end.

David Beck­ham caught in the act.

Becks: Eng­land bid can fol­low Olympics

David Beck­ham says the hair on his back rose when it was an­nounced that the 2012 Olympic Games would be host­ed in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, and he is keep­ing his fin­gers crossed that he can have? a sim­i­lar feel­ing when Fi­fa makes its an­nounce­ment in De­cem­ber on the hosts for the 2018 World Cup Fi­nals. Ar­riv­ing in Port-of-Spain on a pri­vate jet on Sat­ur­day, Beck­ham won the hearts of hun­dreds of young­sters dur­ing the first day of his coach­ing acad­e­my at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, af­ter mak­ing an ap­pear­ance at the Fi­fa Un­der 17 Women's World Cup Fi­nal. In the build up to the Olympic bid process, Lord Coe in­clud­ed Beck­ham as part of the team as­sem­bled to de­liv­er the 2012 Olympic Games with a bril­liant pre­sen­ta­tion in Sin­ga­pore five years ago.

"When our name was an­nounced I got goose­bumps and the hair on my neck stood up," Beck­ham said. "That de­ci­sion has al­ready in­spired so many peo­ple in our coun­try and the thought of do­ing that with the World Cup is amaz­ing. "There was a be­lief with­in the 2012 team that we could pull it off and it's the same now with this bid. "Every­one knows we have a strong pro­pos­al and we have to con­tin­ue work­ing hard to im­press that up­on the 24-man Fi­fa mem­bers who'll vote in De­cem­ber," Beck­ham added. Sure­ly, de­liv­er­ing on his promise to Jack Warn­er last De­cem­ber to bring his acad­e­my to T&T, has left the Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent an im­pressed man. Now on­ly time will tell whether Eng­land will host the world again for the first time since 1966.