T&T mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no will miss the coun­try's next two FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers against the Ba­hamas and St Kitts and Nevis on June 5 and 8, re­spec­tive­ly, as he con­tin­ues to strug­gle to re­cov­er from a ham­string in­jury.

The new Colum­bus Crew sign­ing con­firmed this on Wednes­day as he ex­plained the na­ture of his in­jury which could take him just over a month to be back to full fit­ness and back on the play­ing field.

"As for now, I have been jog­ging, I've been work­ing 40-50 per cent, so still tak­ing my time. I don't want to rush any­thing and go back even longer. I have a grade one and a strained ham­string which is high be­cause the blood doesn't flow, so I need to do two PRP (platelet-rich plas­ma) in­jec­tions so the re­cov­ery is go­ing to be longer. But I feel good, I feel healthy, it's just a mat­ter of get­ting back fit and main­tain­ing my strength for now.

"I think it would be two to three weeks back in train­ing but for games, it may be three to four weeks be­cause now we go in­to a break. On the 29th of this month, we go in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al break which would give me a lot more time. The next game is go­ing to be June 19, so it's quite a long time, which would give me a lot of time to get fit and be ready for the rest of the sea­son," Moli­no ex­plained.

The tal­ent­ed mid­field­er missed the coun­try's first two qual­i­fy­ing match­es against Guyana which the na­tion­al team won 3-0 in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and lat­er against Puer­to Ri­co which fin­ished 1-1 in Mayaguez, Puer­to Ri­co. The re­sults put the So­ca War­riors in sec­ond po­si­tion in Group F on four points, with St Kitts and Nevis lead­ing with six points in their two match­es.

From the equa­tion, the War­riors will need to win their next two match­es for a chance to fin­ish at the top of the group if they are to ad­vance to the next round of the qual­i­fiers.

Moli­no told Guardian Me­dia Sports he has to take time to heal, not­ing that if he rush­es back he may even have to miss the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup, sched­uled for Ju­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to Moli­no: "It's a mat­ter of tak­ing my time and mak­ing sure I look af­ter my­self first and my health to per­form for T&T and my club. I think the boys have done well. Yes, we can do bet­ter but it's a work in progress and we just have to keep go­ing and try to get the two vic­to­ries."

He added that he ex­pects the boys to show per­son­al­i­ty and to play with emo­tions, in the midst of a dif­fi­cult time that has been caused by the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.