FC Cincin­nati’s US Ma­jor League Soc­cer off­sea­son is of­fi­cial­ly un­der­way and among the clubs’ first ca­su­al­ties for the 2020 sea­son is for­mer Eng­land-born T&T de­fend­er Justin Hoyte.

The 34-year-old Hoyte is an ex­pe­ri­enced a right-back who had been a suc­cess with Cincin­nati over the past two years, mak­ing 47 ap­pear­ances.

He be­gan his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer in Eng­land with Ar­se­nal in 2002 and be­fore FCC, spent his ca­reer in the Eng­lish leagues fea­tur­ing for Sun­der­land, Mid­dles­brough, Mill­w­al and Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge. He rep­re­sent­ed T&T at se­nior lev­el 18 times, the last of which came in 2016.

“It is nev­er easy to make de­ci­sions that af­fect your play­ers per­son­al­ly at the end of the sea­son,” FC Cincin­nati GM Ger­ard Nijkamp said in a club state­ment.

“We had to take an eval­u­a­tive ap­proach af­ter this sea­son and look hard at who we be­lieve will fit in­to our sys­tem go­ing for­ward. There were some very tough de­ci­sions to be made, but ul­ti­mate­ly our goal is to put an im­proved prod­uct on the field in 2020.

The club de­clined op­tions on Hoyte, Roland Lamah and Cor­ben Bone while it al­lowed the con­tracts of Vic­tor Ul­loa’ and Naz­mi Al­badawi to ex­pire.

Cincin­nati’s first sea­son in MLS was a dif­fi­cult one as the ex­pan­sion club fin­ished bot­tom of the league with just 24 points while set­ting a new league record for most goals con­ced­ed with 75.

Over­all, Hoyte, the old­er broth­er of Gavin Hoyte, who was capped three times by T&T, has made 349 ap­pear­ances, scored six goals and added 15 as­sists across all com­pe­ti­tions in his 17-year pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer.

Orig­i­nal­ly signed by FC Cincin­nati on March 29, 2017, he en­joyed two sea­sons with the Or­ange and Blue in the Unit­ed Soc­cer League lev­el, scor­ing two goals and adding four as­sists while play­ing most­ly at right back.