Speedy AEK Athens mid­field­er and strik­er Levi Gar­cia ea­ger­ly awaits the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play for the T&T So­ca War­riors un­der new coach Dwight Yorke. 

Gar­cia has been bat­tling in­juries, which pre­vent­ed him from play­ing for the So­ca War­riors as reg­u­lar­ly as he wants.

How­ev­er, he said on a re­cent I95.5FM ra­dio pro­gramme host­ed by An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste that he is back to good health now and wants to keep it that way so that he can give his best for the red, white, and black of T&T. 

He showed his scor­ing skills and what be­ing in good health can do when he scored his team’s sec­ond goal in a 4-2 vic­to­ry over Vo­los in the Greece Su­per League, Sun­day. The win pushed AEK Athens to sec­ond in the stand­ings.

Jens Jans­son opened the scor­ing for AEK in the 18th minute be­fore Gar­cia hand­ed them a two-goal cush­ion in the 52nd.

An­tho­ny Mar­tial then made it 3-0 two min­utes lat­er.

Their win was com­plet­ed when Frantzdy Pier­rot found the net in the 86th minute, de­spite items from Mark Kosz­ta and Pe­dro Conde for Vo­los. 

Gar­cia last played for T&T against Grena­da in the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo last year (2024), a match that end­ed in a 2-2 tie. Gar­cia was tak­en off in the sec­ond half. 

Apart from his re­cov­ery, Gar­cia is ea­ger to give his best un­der Yorke and has been work­ing hard to be back to full fit­ness, as well as in goal-scor­ing form.

He said, “I’ve been do­ing a lot of fin­ish­ing work. I’ve been fo­cus­ing on my fit­ness, and I have been talk­ing to play­ers who have played at the high­est lev­els, so on and off the pitch, I’m do­ing things to get in­to the right po­si­tions and fin­ish off right. I had a chat with Dwight ear­ly when he was ap­point­ed as the head coach, but lis­ten, I think peo­ple un­der­es­ti­mate how big Dwight is and the in­flu­ence that he will bring to the team, so I am ex­cit­ed to work with him, and I’m hop­ing that he can get the best out of me too.” 

Since tak­ing over at the helm of the na­tion­al se­nior team, Yorke, a for­mer na­tion­al and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er, has had one lo­cal prac­tice match against De­fence Force at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, which end­ed 1-0 for his charges, and one out-of-FI­FA-win­dow in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Sau­di Ara­bia at the Al Shabab Club Sta­di­um in Riyadh on De­cem­ber 17 last year, which the home team won 3-1. 

Yorke, though, told the me­dia that he was im­pressed with the out­put of his charges. His man­date is to take the coun­try to the 2026 FI­FA World Cup to be host­ed by the CON­CA­CAF trio of Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the Unit­ed States. 

Apart from that, Yorke’s men will al­so con­test the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nar­ies against Cu­ba in two match­es in March, be­fore fac­ing St Kitts/Nevis in their World Cup qual­i­fi­er in June at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. 

Kieron Ed­wards, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, has promised to pro­vide all the re­sources need­ed for the team, re­veal­ing re­cent­ly that two friend­ly en­coun­ters with Ja­maica have been lined up for Feb­ru­ary in Kingston, as well as lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al camps. 

Quizzed about whether he felt pres­sured in the red, white, and black of T&T, Gar­cia said, “Pres­sure is al­ways there; even at the club lev­el, there is pres­sure be­cause there is a lot of ex­pec­ta­tion when you set your stan­dards high. But as I said, my main fo­cus is to be healthy be­cause once I’m healthy, I will be able to de­liv­er for the coun­try, and I am one of the play­ers who want to de­liv­er.”