King makes changes for Russia clash

T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team coach Derek King has named five new play­ers in his team from the South Ko­rea en­counter for Tues­day’s in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Rus­sia, which will be played at the icon­ic Kalin­ingrad Are­na.

The match kicks off at 7:00 p.m. lo­cal time (1:00 p.m. T&T time) and is be­ing used by the T&T squad as part of their prepa­ra­tions for the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, which kicks off in Sep­tem­ber.

The 46-year-old King and his squad were sched­uled to ar­rive in Kalin­ingrad yes­ter­day fol­low­ing their jour­ney through Is­tan­bul, Turkey, as the team pre­pares to take on the 35th-ranked Rus­sians, who blanked Burk­i­na Fa­so 3-0 in a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al yes­ter­day, to fol­low up a 1-0 loss to World Cup-bound Egypt on May 28.

For Tues­day’s macth King will have to do with­out the US Ma­jor League Soc­cer MLS quin­tet of Dante Sealy (Col­orado Rapids), Wayne Fred­er­ick II (Col­orado Rapids), Tyrese Spicer (Or­lan­do City), Jay­lon Year­wood (Or­lan­do City B), and de­fend­er Ko­bi Hen­ry of Re­al Salt Lake, who cap­tained team in the 5-0 loss to South Ko­rea af­ter they re­quest­ed to be ex­cused from this in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow while New York red Bull’s Roald Mitchell and Lex­ingston SC’s Ja­cob Greene have al­so missed out

Al­so un­avail­able for se­lec­tion are for­ward Levi Gar­cia, Crys­tal Palace de­fend­er Rio Car­dines, Dutch-based de­fend­er Deron Payne, and Scot­land-based de­fend­er Kier­an Ng­wenya, the lat­ter of whom made his de­but in T&T’s last out­ing.

In their ab­sence, goal­keep­er Den­zil Smith, de­fend­er An­dre Ray­mond, mid­field­ers An­dre Ram­per­sad and Ryan Telfer as well as strik­er Re­on Moore have been in­clud­ed.

De­spite those ab­sences, King be­lieves the fix­ture presents an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther as­sess the depth of the na­tion­al pro­gramme and pro­vide valu­able in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure to sev­er­al emerg­ing play­ers.

“We are look­ing for­ward to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play Rus­sia in Rus­sia,” King said.

“It is an­oth­er im­por­tant match in our prepa­ra­tion and de­vel­op­ment as a na­tion­al team. While a few of our se­nior for­eign-based play­ers will not be avail­able for this fix­ture, it pro­vides an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to con­tin­ue eval­u­at­ing play­ers and ex­pand­ing our play­er pool.”

The T&T coach point­ed to the squad’s ex­pe­ri­ence as a key fac­tor head­ing in­to the en­counter.

“We will still have ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers in the squad, in­clud­ing Re­on Moore, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Daniel Phillips and Den­zil Smith, whose lead­er­ship and ex­pe­ri­ence will be valu­able for the group.”

King al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of in­te­grat­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of na­tion­al team play­ers in­to the se­nior en­vi­ron­ment.

“We are al­so ex­cit­ed that sev­er­al play­ers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play for the se­nior team. This is part of our long-term vi­sion of build­ing depth, cre­at­ing com­pe­ti­tion for places, and iden­ti­fy­ing play­ers who can con­tribute to the fu­ture suc­cess of T&T foot­ball.”

“We see this match as a pos­i­tive chal­lenge against qual­i­ty op­po­si­tion. It is an­oth­er step in our jour­ney as we con­tin­ue to build a strong and com­pet­i­tive na­tion­al team.”

The friend­ly against Rus­sia con­tin­ues T&T’s pro­gramme of fac­ing strong in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­si­tion as prepa­ra­tions for fu­ture com­pe­ti­tions progress.

T&T squad

Goal­keep­ers: 1. Jabari Brice (Cen­tral FC), , 21. Teshorne Ra­goo (Club San­do), 22. Den­zil Smith (AV AL­ta FC/USA)

De­fend­ers: 3. Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton (Club San­do), 4. An­dre Ray­mond (Tam­pereen Ilves/Fin­land), 17. Noah Pow­der (Westch­ester SC/USA), 6. An­tho­ny Her­bert (In­dy Eleven/USA), 7. Justin Gar­cia (Song Lam Nghe An/Viet­nam).

Mid­field­ers: Daniel Phillips (Ste­vange FC/UK), Daniel David (Cen­tral FC), Ju­dah Gar­cia (Pae GS Il­ioupoli/Greece), Ali Kaz­im Nakhid (Al It­ti­faq FC/UAE), An­dre Ram­per­sad (Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Michel Poon-Angeron (Port­land Hearts of Pine/USA), Ryan Telfer (Hal;ifax Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Mo­lik Khan (AS Trencin/Slo­va­kia), John-Paul Rochford (Al-Khabourah/Oman), Kai­him Thomas (Cor­pus Christi FC/USA)

For­wards: Re­on Moore (Song Lam Nghe An/Viet­nam), Ja­heim Faustin (San Juan Jabloteh), Isa­iah Lee (Cen­tral FC)