Tal­ent­ed T&T mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no has been ruled out of T&T’s CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League match­es against the Ba­hamas and Nicaragua due to in­jury.

Moli­no, who has not played for T&T for some time be­cause of in­juries, picked up the knee in­jury last week while train­ing with his club Colum­bus Crew and was ex­pect­ed to miss his club’s game Sat­ur­day evening against the New York Red Bulls. He is ex­pect­ed to re­turn in two weeks.

Yes­ter­day, Moli­no told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he didn’t want to talk about the in­jury, on­ly to say that he will be out for the short term.

“I will be out for the match­es against the Ba­hamas and Nicaragua,” Moli­no said.

With nine points in the sec­ond po­si­tion in Group C, T&T will be away to the Ba­hamas on March 24 be­fore re­turn­ing home at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, to face the Nicaraguans in their fi­nal match, need­ing to win the group to be pro­mot­ed to group A.

Nicaragua leads the group with 10 points af­ter beat­ing T&T in the first match be­tween the teams in Man­agua in June last year. Moli­no said the com­ing two match­es can de­ter­mine the fu­ture of T&T foot­ball which is why he re­al­ly want­ed to be in the team.

“I was 100 per cent look­ing for­ward to these games, more than be­fore be­cause it’s so im­por­tant, these two games. It’s im­por­tant in the short term and it’s im­por­tant for the long term, in terms of qual­i­fy­ing for tier 1, which is Group A if we win the two games, qual­i­fy­ing for the Gold Cup and al­so the World Cup that is com­ing up.

“We have to im­prove our rank­ings to be in the Hex stage. These two games can de­ter­mine our fu­ture both in the short term and the long term,” Moli­no said.

Mean­while, Moli­no praised the T&T team and its staff for the 1-0 se­ries win against Ja­maica in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­coun­ters last week.

T&T beat the Ja­maicans, 1-0, cour­tesy of a 67th-minute Re­on Moore goal on March 11 and lat­er held their coun­ter­parts to a goal­less draw on Tues­day.

Moli­no said: “It was a good show­ing when you look at play­ers who haven’t been ac­tive for quite some time to still go out there and give a good show­ing of them­selves. I think the peo­ple at the front desk of the of­fice de­serve a lit­tle cred­it for keep­ing the group to­geth­er for quite some time, since No­vem­ber, and to get a cou­ple of games in, which is good.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, now, we have in­juries and hope­ful­ly, the guys who got se­lect­ed can pull it off,” Moli­no said.