T&T de­fend­er Aubrey David would soon be a cit­i­zen of Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has, as it has done to many things around the world, af­fect­ed this process for David be­com­ing a Cos­ta Ri­can from tak­ing place tem­porar­i­ly, but David, a Guyanese-born who plays for T&T, is cer­tain to have triple cit­i­zen­ship once the op­por­tu­ni­ty presents it­self as he is mar­ried to a Cos­ta Ri­can.

David in an in­ter­view re­cent­ly told Guardian Me­dia Sports the move is not aimed at play­ing for the 'Ticos' but to make things eas­i­er for him­self and his club- De­porti­vo Sapris­sa in the top-flight Cos­ta Ri­can Foot­ball League.

" To play in these coun­tries it's dif­fi­cult in terms of the spots they have. It's not like oth­er leagues where they al­low like sev­en for­eign play­ers, so you have to ac­tu­al­ly be at the top of your game to get in.

So now that I am el­i­gi­ble to be­come a cit­i­zen, and al­so free up a spot for Sapris­sa and make it eas­i­er for my­self, that even if I go some­where else, I can come back here and not be count­ed as a for­eign­er, it helps every­body.

It wasn't an easy de­ci­sion but it has been years, the di­rec­tors came to me and said it was a pos­si­bil­i­ty. What I thought about the most was if it would have af­fect­ed any­thing with T&T and it doesn't so it will help me in my pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer.

The process hasn't even been start­ed as yet. It is some­thing that I've been think­ing about. There is a lot of com­pli­ca­tions to get it be­cause with the whole pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion, some pa­pers I have to go down to T&T to get but I haven't had di­a­logue so. Then it was the end of the sea­son and then we had the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup."

David made his full in­ter­na­tion­al de­but for the T&T na­tion­al team on 29 Feb­ru­ary 2012 against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da at the age of 21, but fol­low­ing the team's elim­i­na­tion from the 2014 FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers David made an about-turn by ac­cept­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to play for Guyana.

He re­turned to the red, white and black of T&T in No­vem­ber 2012 and has played for the So­ca War­riors since.

Late last year David was ad­judged the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's Play­er of the Year, an award he em­braced with grat­i­tude, say­ing he gave God thanks for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have health and strength to play the game of foot­ball, and al­so be recog­nised for it. He ruled it as his best year, in spite of the pan­dem­ic: " 2021 I could say would have been my best year be­cause we won two tro­phies out of three and al­so we had a good Gold Cup, al­though we didn't reach as far as we would have liked to.

We would have liked to go fur­ther on in the tour­na­ment but we had a good show­ing and we made the coun­try proud, so 2021 was a good year for me, the on­ly thing is that we didn't end the year by win­ning an­oth­er tro­phy with my club.

David's achieve­ment for 2021 in fact, ex­ceed­ed all ex­pec­ta­tions as he was vot­ed the fifth most con­sis­tent play­er around the world, in terms of ap­pear­ances for both club and coun­try. This he ac­cred­it­ed to his self-care.

Af­ter see­ing the sta­tis­tic it was a feel­ing of grat­i­tude, more im­por­tant­ly, I'm thank­ful to God for giv­ing me health and strength and keep­ing me in­jury free so I can be able to help my team, help my coun­try by be­ing on the field.

I had to sit down and think 67 games in one year with­out any in­jury, with­out any com­pli­ca­tions, I felt very grate­ful."

Prepa­ra­tion for the 2022 sea­son kicked off re­cent­ly for David and Sapris­sa with hopes that more tro­phies and ti­tles will be won this year.