He's large­ly con­sid­ered as the best play­mak­er and most skill­ful mid­field­er to ar­rive on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage for this coun­try pri­or to Rus­sell Lat­apy. And like the lat­ter, he has cho­sen the path of coach­ing in an at­tempt to re­main in the game. Arnold Dwari­ka, the for­mer diminu­tive Mal­ick Se­nior Comp and Joe Pub­lic play­er was among the lo­cal coach­es who com­plet­ed the TTFF/Dutch "C" Li­cense coach­ing course at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um last Fri­day. At present, Dwari­ka, who earned his last pick as a play­er un­der Fran­cis­co Mat­u­rana in 2009, is a mem­ber of the Di­recTV North East Stars coach­ing staff.

He miss­es play­ing but is ea­ger to stay in the game. "It's a learn­ing process for me and a chance for me to help de­vel­op the younger play­ers to the stan­dard that is re­quired for in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball or mov­ing on to play over­seas. "It's a bit dif­fer­ent be­ing on the oth­er side of the line. It's a time to put things in­to per­spec­tive to mak­ing play­ers achieve what you want and it's up to me to do it from a coach­ing as­pect.

"It will be a bit dif­fi­cult for me talk­ing from the oth­er side of the line as com­pared to how it was for me from on the in­side of the line of a play­er," Dwari­ka said.

"I think this course is the right to start for a per­son like me who is com­ing over from be­ing a play­er. I al­ways like chal­lenges. "Coach­ing will have the ups and downs but this is why we are part of these cours­es. It's about learn­ing how to make the games more en­joy­able and love­able for the younger ones.

"We have a youth pro­gram in place at North East so it's a mat­ter of ap­ply­ing what we are learn­ing at this course. "The over­all de­vel­op­ment will not come overnight. It's a phase where we need to be pa­tient.

"This course is about de­vel­op­ing the youths so that when they go to the na­tion­al lev­el, the coach­es will not have the prob­lem of hav­ing to teach them the ba­sics. "I'll al­ways miss play­ing. I don't know when I'll stop miss­ing play­ing but this is a great step for me to be part of it," added Dwari­ka, who scored nine goals in 46 ap­pear­ances for Scot­tish club East Fife be­tween 1995-1997 and is still re­gard­ed as one of the bet­ter play­ers to have graced that club from out­side of Eu­rope.

Dwari­ka's play­ing ca­reer stemmed from 1992 when he ap­peared for De­fence Force and fol­lowed by play­ing for the likes of Al Ansar in Lebanon, Guangzhou Rizhi­quan, Qing­dao Hail­ifeng and Bei­jing Guoan in Chi­na along­side Gary Glas­gow, W Con­nec­tion, Unit­ed Petrotrin, Su­per­star Rangers, Trin­i­ty Pros and East Fife. He net­ted 28 goals in 72 ap­pear­ances for T&T dur­ing which pe­ri­od he won the Play­er of the year ti­tle in 1998, 1999 and 2001 and al­so capped the Caribbean top play­er award in 1999 while earn­ing the T&T Pro league's top­scor­er award with 45 goals in 1999 and fol­lowed up with a per­for­mance that earned him se­lec­tion on the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup "All Star" team in 2000 along­side Lat­apy and Dwight Yorke. Oth­er no­table names on that All star eleven in­clud­ed Mex­i­co's Rafael Mar­quez and Ra­mon Ramirez and Amer­i­can Co­bi Jones.

Daniel zones out

So thrilled was Keon Daniel ahead of his full de­but for Philadel­phia Union against New York Red Bulls on the week­end that he ad­mit­ted he zoned out pri­or to tak­ing the field for the MLS en­counter. Daniel played the full 90 min­utes and earned rave re­views for his per­for­mance. "I guess the best part is that I didn't have a lot of time to think. I didn't have a lot of time to process it. I think if I had three or four days, it might have been tougher. "Re­al­ly, I found out ear­li­er on Sat­ur­day and just fo­cused in for the match. It was a great feel­ing. I was hon­ored and ex­cit­ed all at the same time." Af­ter the Union de­feat­ed the Red Bulls be­fore a record crowd of 19,027 at PPL Park, Daniel was still rev­el­ing in the vic­to­ry. There wasn't quite enough time to re­flect on the mag­ni­tude of the sit­u­a­tion. "Walk­ing out of the tun­nel with the fans go­ing crazy, hear­ing your name an­nounced, see­ing the fans stand­ing and clap­ping ... it was some­thing.

"I was kind of in a zone out there. I kept telling my­self to slow down once the game start­ed and not try to go too fast. " I was pleased with my per­for­mance and I'm anx­ious to see the film," Daniel added.

Sher­wood's club part­ners with Ar­se­nal

Rich­mond Strik­ers, the US-based club of for­mer Na­tion­al Un­der 20 play­er An­tho­ny Sher­wood re­cent­ly formed a part­ner­ship with Pre­mier­ship club Ar­se­nal which is aimed at un­earthing new stars.Ar­se­nal's in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ship de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er Steve Mor­row says the part­ner­ship formed last year is al­ready pay­ing div­i­dends and they have al­so for­mer a sim­i­lar re­la­tion­ship with MLS club Col­orado Rapids. Sher­wood has been a youth coach for al­most 14 years and is in charge of their Un­der 15 elite team at Rich­mond which is a Nike Pre­mier club in Vir­ginia. "An­tho­ny's ex­per­tise and ex­ten­sive play­ing back­ground en­ables him to have a huge im­pact on our old­er, more tal­ent­ed play­ers," the Rich­mond club stat­ed. "There is a lot that I en­joy about coach­ing at Strik­ers; the first thing that comes to mind is that we are very pro­fes­sion­al in our ap­proach to what we do," Sher­wood stat­ed. "Sec­ond­ly, I think that we have an amaz­ing track record of get­ting play­ers to the next lev­el – whether that is the na­tion­al team, col­lege, etc. "If one were to look at the play­ers who have grad­u­at­ed from this club, who start­ed as ear­ly as the ADP pro­gram (8 or 9 years old) you would see play­ers who are part of the na­tion­al team, play­ers who are play­ing at the very high­est lev­el in col­lege soc­cer, and of course pro­fes­sion­al­ly," added Sher­wood ,who ap­peared at the 1991 FI­FA World Youth Cup un­der Bertille St Clair and skip­per Dwight Yorke.

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