AL­BU­QUERQUE, New Mex­i­co – Dis­card­ed T&T de­fend­er An­tho­ny Her­bert joined Unit­ed Soc­cer League Cham­pi­onship out­fit, New Mex­i­co Unit­ed this past week.

The 25-year-old was with­out a club since the start of the year af­ter play­ing for FC Ha­ka in the top tier in Fin­land, where he made 32 ap­pear­ances across all com­pe­ti­tions, in­clud­ing two in the UE­FA Con­fer­ence League qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment af­ter the club fin­ished fourth in the 2022 league sea­son.

“We are ex­cit­ed to wel­come Tony to the Black & Yel­low,” Unit­ed sport­ing di­rec­tor Ita­mar Keinan said. “His com­bi­na­tion of size, ath­leti­cism, and tal­ent will help make us a for­mi­da­ble op­po­nent at the back. We can’t wait to see what he ac­com­plish­es in New Mex­i­co.”

New Mex­i­co Unit­ed, who fin­ished eighth in the West­ern Con­fer­ence stand­ings last year and earned a place in the play-offs, open the new USL Cham­pi­onship sea­son against Pitts­burgh River­hounds on Sat­ur­day, March 9, on home soil at Iso­topes Park.

Born in the Unit­ed States, Her­bert was a mem­ber of the T&T squad that won the Un­der-15 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­onship 11 years ago, and he has al­so rep­re­sent­ed the two-is­land re­pub­lic at the Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 lev­els.

Stand­ing 6 feet, 4 inch­es tall, Her­bert pri­mar­i­ly op­er­ates as a cen­tre-back, and he has played in two ex­hi­bi­tion match­es for the So­ca War­riors against Thai­land and Tajik­istan two years ago.

Be­fore turn­ing pro, Her­bert made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact play­ing on the Unit­ed States col­le­giate cir­cuit for Fair­leigh Dick­in­son Uni­ver­si­ty in the state of New Jer­sey, where he played in 38 match­es across two sea­sons and was named to the Unit­ed Soc­cer Coach­es all-re­gion third team af­ter his sopho­more cam­paign.

He al­so played for St John’s Uni­ver­si­ty in his home state of New York, where he made 20 ap­pear­ances across two cam­paigns. Dur­ing this time, Her­bert al­so com­pet­ed in the USL League 2 Cham­pi­onship for the Ocean City Nor’east­ers.

CMC