Shaun Fuentes

Unit­ed States-based mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no eas­i­ly de­liv­ered the most sig­nif­i­cant match win­ning per­for­mance for Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2011. His goal in T&T's 2-1 loss to Bermu­da would have eas­i­ly gone un­no­ticed as fail­ure to se­cure at least a point in Hamil­ton even­tu­al­ly led to this coun­try's ex­it from Brazil 2014. But Moli­no's com­mand­ing per­for­mance in a 9-1 win over Suri­name last month kept T&T's 2012 Olympic hopes alive. His four goals in that match was just what the doc­tor or­dered. Moli­no was al­so out­stand­ing in T&T's three match­es against Ecuador, Mex­i­co and Uruguay at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Guadala­jara. The Care­nage-born play­er is now set­ting his sights on even greater ac­com­plish­ments in 2012.

"I want to qual­i­fy for a ma­jor tour­na­ment. Be­ing knocked out of the World Cup has been the biggest dis­ap­point­ment of my short ca­reer so far. I nev­er thought that we would be out so ear­ly when I came in to the se­nior team, " Moli­no said. "That by far was the worst ex­pe­ri­ence in 2011 for me but the Olympic team did pret­ty well. Scor­ing four goals against Suri­name was my best per­for­mance for a na­tion­al team and I think we have a re­al­ly good chance of qual­i­fy­ing. The group is not an easy one but we have the skill and the ex­pe­ri­ence to do well in the fi­nal round next year. I think once we put down our heads and work to­geth­er then we can def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fy for the Olympics," he added. "We are out of the World Cup and so the next big event for us is the Olympics and this team has some good play­ers who can car­ry on for the se­nior team in­to the World Cup for 2018. We have a lot of word ahead of us but I think once we plan well and work hard then we can be suc­cess­ful all the way," said Moli­no. T&T will face Mex­i­co, Hon­duras and El Sal­vador in the open­ing group phase of the CON­CA­CAF fi­nal round in Cal­i­for­nia, USA in March, 2012.

Yorke: Man­ches­ter ti­tle fight is on

Dwight Yorke be­lieves the Man­ches­ter der­by third round tie at the Eti­had Sta­di­um in Jan­u­ary will de­cide which team even­tu­al­ly wins the Bar­clays Pre­mier League ti­tle. The for­mer Unit­ed strik­er be­lieves both sides will not be short of mo­ti­va­tion for the af­fair. Unit­ed were thrashed 6-1 by City at Old Traf­ford in Oc­to­ber in a league match and their re­match in the FA Cup is be­ing looked at as a bat­tle be­tween the two best teams in Eng­land. "Right now City look to have the beat­ing of Unit­ed - and they have the mo­men­tum," Yorke said. "They have had an in­cred­i­ble start to the sea­son and are scor­ing a huge amount of goals. Yet Unit­ed are still on their tails and we all know that they go up a lev­el at the turn of the year. I think this Cup draw ac­tu­al­ly suits Unit­ed more than City," he added. "If they can win this tie it might just put a few doubts in­to City's mind and in turn give Unit­ed a fresh im­pe­tus. In that sense it is a huge­ly im­por­tant game. Yorke stat­ed he is "con­vinced" that Unit­ed can strike a "psy­cho­log­i­cal" blow to City by knock­ing them out the com­pe­ti­tion they won last sea­son. "You know that when Unit­ed re­al­ly need to win the big games, when they have to pull a re­sult out the bag, they tend to do it. While City are rid­ing high and have the con­fi­dence from win­ning the Cup last year, Unit­ed still have the ex­pe­ri­ence when it comes to the sec­ond-half of a sea­son.

Seat­tle Sounders to search for tal­ent

Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer Club Seat­tle Sounders will host its first Com­bine out­side of the Unit­ed States when they vis­it Trinidad in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. The club an­nounced last week that their coach­es will vis­it this coun­try in search of tal­ent that make an im­pact in the MLS. Club tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Chris Hen­der­son said the main goal is sim­i­lar to that of the team's col­lege com­bine - find­ing "one of those hid­den play­ers who can make a dif­fer­ence." In the past three years, Seat­tle has had var­ied suc­cess when it comes to the col­lege drafts. Sev­en of the team's 12 Su­per­Draft picks are still with the team, but mid­field­er Steve Za­kuani (a first-round pick in 2009) was the on­ly draft­ed play­er pro­tect­ed in No­vem­ber's ex­pan­sion draft. Con­tri­bu­tions from oth­er draft­ed play­ers have been in­con­sis­tent, though Hen­der­son thinks the Sounders' draft his­to­ry is "prob­a­bly right in line with most teams in the league." "We've hit on some and we've missed on some," he said. "It's re­al­ly not easy to tell how a guy's go­ing to do when he gets in­to the pros. ... You al­ways want to do all the re­search and every­thing could be pos­i­tive, and you still get it wrong. I think a lot of it de­pends on the in­di­vid­ual and how he adapts to be­ing a pro." Evans Wise an­nounced ear­li­er this month that T&T mid­field­er Cordell Cato was snapped up by the Sounders and he is ex­pect­ed to join the club short­ly for pre­sea­son train­ing.

Charles sees pos­i­tives from Fes­ti­val

Na­tion­al Women's coach Mar­lon Charles was the man with the idea be­hind the stag­ing of the re­cent Girls Foot­ball Fes­ti­val host­ed by the TTFF for Pri­ma­ry Schools at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um and the TTFF coach­ing in­struc­tor be­lieves that lo­cal women's foot­ball stands to ben­e­fit from ex­er­cis­es like that which saw over 200 play­ers hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with se­nior team play­ers and coach­es dur­ing the one day fes­ti­val. "It re­al­ly was about get­ting the young girls to come out and en­joy the game and learn more about it at the same time," said Charles. "I think it was a fit­ting way to close off the year in that it al­lowed us at the TTFF to in­ter­act with the Pri­ma­ry Schools and the play­ers were ex­posed to a day of foot­ball at the Sta­di­um and the chance to in­ter­act with the se­nior play­ers. This was an ex­cel­lent stage for some­thing that would ben­e­fit the lo­cal women's game for the fu­ture," said Charles who was able to ini­ti­ate a part­ner­ship with At­lantic LNG for the fes­ti­val. TTFF youth de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer An­ton Corneal was al­so present and he men­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sim­i­lar event for Pri­ma­ry School boys. "It's def­i­nite­ly a great idea to have some­thing like this and it would be worth the while to have it for the boys too be­cause it al­lows us to have a look at them as well as it gives them good ex­po­sure at that young age," said Corneal. NB: Yours Tru­ly, on be­half of the lo­cal foot­balling fra­ter­ni­ty wish­es all read­ers, play­ers, of­fi­cials and lo­cal foot­ball fans a safe and pro­duc­tive 2012.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia

of­fi­cer for the TTFF. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com