There was no room for tal­ent­ed young strik­er Niki­ta Go­sine in Mar­lon Charles’ 18-man team to con­test the com­ing Con­ca­caf Un­der-15 Cham­pi­onships to be held here in T&T from Au­gust 5–11. 

Charles and his staff of as­sis­tant coach­es, Ayana Rus­sell and Afiyah Matthias, se­lect­ed play­ers from the lo­cal Women’s Foot­ball League (WoLF) and play­ers based abroad for the de­vel­op­ment cham­pi­onships. 

How­ev­er, Go­sine, who is be­ing la­belled as one of the bet­ter play­ers in the coun­try based pure­ly on po­ten­tial, was part of the Un­der-15 pro­gramme but did not com­mand a place on the team de­spite her soar­ing per­for­mances for lo­cal club Club San­do, which has fea­tured in the two lat­est fi­nals in lo­cal foot­ball. 

One for­mer coach told Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty that the prob­lem may have been dis­ci­pli­nary. 

How­ev­er, Go­sine’s moth­er, Na­tal­ie Des Vi­gnes, a for­mer na­tion­al strik­er, told Guardian Me­dia Sports that she is un­hap­py with the treat­ment giv­en to her daugh­ter on the team. 

Des Vi­gnes is the moth­er of tal­ent­ed daugh­ters Niki­ta and Na­talia Go­sine, both of whom have been with the women’s pro­gramme for the past two years. Des Vi­gnes point­ed to one is­sue that pre­vent­ed Niki­ta from a place on the na­tion­al team for last year’s Un­der-17 Con­ca­caf Tour­na­ment here, say­ing Niki­ta at­tend­ed a train­ing ses­sion on De­cem­ber 9 on her birth­day, the day be­fore the team was to be cho­sen. 

“She had to play in a fut­sal tour­na­ment, and I asked a staff mem­ber if she could have been al­lowed to play. The mem­ber said yes, but when the team was se­lect­ed, she was not on it. That made me re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed, and for Niki­ta, the dis­ap­point­ment was worse,” Des Vi­gnes ex­plained. 

Niki­ta, the 14-year-old prodi­gy, was the lead­ing goalscor­er in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) last year with 57 goals while play­ing for Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School. 

Now, even if she (Niki­ta) is called for the team at this 99th hour, she would not be able to play as both she and her sis­ter will be off to the Unit­ed States in Au­gust to play against a few col­leges in Ari­zona and Mis­sis­sip­pi with the Cox Coach­ing Acad­e­my. Des Vi­gnes said: 

Des Vi­gnes made it clear as a play­er that she had been through the same treat­ment but was not ac­cept­ing it for her daugh­ters, say­ing they de­serve a lot more than that. 

The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to meet with Des Vi­gnes soon to trash out the is­sues af­fect­ing the par­ties. 

Ef­forts to reach Charles for a com­ment proved fu­tile. Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stood the team had been in train­ing.

SE­LECT­ED PLAY­ERS

1 Akeila Mar­ryshow (GK- Trend­set­ter Hawks), 2 Jes­si­ca Nes­bit (DEF- East­ern Coun­ty Utd), 3 Hac­k­eemar Goodridge (DEF- Trend­set­ter Hawks), 4 Ki­mani Wal­lace (DEF- Jew­els SC), 5 Mate­ja Leben (DEF- Pro Se­ries FC), 6 Mia Lee Chong (MF- Or­lan­do City EC­NL), 7 Jay­da Her­bert (MF- Trend­set­ter Hawks)

8 Rori Git­tens (MF- Pro Se­ries FC), 9 Shakil­la Hamil­ton (MF- South Stars SC), 10 Mikalah Guerero (MF- Trend­set­ter Hawks), 11 San­ni Wil­son (MF-Flori­da Unit­ed Soc­cer Club), 12 Gyasi Lewis (MF- Com­bined Ballerz), 13 She­ma­iah Tou­s­saint (Cox Coach­ing School)

14 Al­liyah Bap­tiste (Jew­els SC), 15 Zye­sha Potts (Jew­els SC), 16 Taya Williams (DEF- Pro Se­ries FC), 17 Scar­lett Cole (For­ward- Pro Se­ries FC), 18 Zofia Richards (GK- Crown Trace FC)

STAFF

Mar­lon Charles- (Head Coach), Ayana Rus­sell- (Asst Coach), Afiyah Matthias (As­sis­tant Coach), Ri­car­da Nel­son (Man­ag­er), De­clan Squires (Goal­keep­er Coach), Kiren John­son (Team Medic), Raquel Rus­sell (Equip­ment Man­ag­er), Kristin Fung (Team Doc­tor)