The re­cent An­te­ri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment tear suf­fered by na­tion­al mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no while on du­ty for Or­lan­do City has left a dent in Stephen Hart's team for the up­com­ing 2015 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and the se­mi-fi­nal round of the 2018 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign in No­vem­ber.

It is a dent that Hart and the rest of the "So­ca War­riors" will aim to re­pair. That sure­ly is not out of the ques­tion and not be­yond Hart's men.

But for Moli­no, his re­cov­ery will not be as easy and a lot will de­pend on the run of events of the new few weeks ac­cord­ing to TTFA con­sult­ing or­tho­pe­dic sur­geon Dr Mario John who is based in Or­lan­do.

"Most ACL tears can­not be su­tured (stitched) back to­geth­er. To sur­gi­cal­ly re­pair the ACL and re­store knee sta­bil­i­ty, the lig­a­ment must be re­con­struct­ed. The torn lig­a­ment will be re­placed with a tis­sue graft," John said. Moli­no's in­jury was a com­plete rup­ture, sim­i­lar to what Mar­vin An­drews sus­tained be­fore the 2006 World Cup. It is de­scribed as a "Grade III" where lig­a­ment has been split in­to two pieces, and the knee joint is un­sta­ble.

John ex­plained, for the sake the ath­lete's knowl­edge, "that you might hear a pop­ping noise and you may feel your knee give out from un­der you. Oth­er typ­i­cal symp­toms of an ACL in­jury in­clude pain with swelling, loss of full range of mo­tion, ten­der­ness along the joint line and dis­com­fort while walk­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Or­tho­pe­dic sur­geons, whether the treat­ment in­volves surgery or not, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plays a vi­tal role in get­ting an ath­lete back to their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties. A phys­i­cal ther­a­py pro­gramme that will help re­gain knee strength and mo­tion is a must. John said that Moli­no's phys­i­cal ther­a­py af­ter surgery will first fo­cus on re­turn­ing mo­tion to the joint and sur­round­ing mus­cles. A strength­en­ing pro­gramme de­signed to pro­tect the new lig­a­ment will fol­low this. This strength­en­ing grad­u­al­ly in­creas­es the stress across the lig­a­ment. The fi­nal phase of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion is aimed at a func­tion­al re­turn tai­lored for the ath­lete's sport. Moli­no is like­ly to be out of ac­tion for be­tween six to nine months de­pend­ing on his lev­el of re­hab. The play­er, ob­vi­ous­ly dis­traught over his cur­rent sta­tus, vows to come back from it.

"It's a try­ing time but time heals and hope­ful­ly the surgery will go well and I can bounce back even bet­ter. The men­tal chal­lenge will be a re­al test but I am sure I can come through it. I'm just dis­ap­point­ed that I will not be with the boys for the Gold Cup and with my club for the rest of the sea­son. But I'll be back again, I can promise you that," Moli­no said.

Oliv­er eyes coach­ing role

Cen­tral FC vet­er­an mid­field ace mae­stro Mar­vin Oliv­er, many be­lieve, can pos­si­bly still make the na­tion­al se­nior men's team at age 39.

But even if that doesn't turn out to be, the for­mer US-based play­er could still have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with a na­tion­al team as a coach some­day. Oliv­er is among a group of lo­cal coach­es who passed the re­cent Con­ca­caf 'D' Li­cense course staged by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA). He re­ceived his coach­ing cer­tifi­cate last week from the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body af­ter un­der­go­ing the course con­duced by Con­ca­caf in­struc­tors Lenny Lake and An­dre Waugh and sub­se­quent­ly pass­ing the "D" li­cense ex­am­i­na­tion at the TTFA of­fices at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um a few weeks ago. It is like­ly he will serve as a coach at the reign­ing Pro League cham­pi­on club but he is al­so ey­ing a call to na­tion­al coach­ing du­ty as well.

"It's been an eye open­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me work­ing with the in­struc­tors and the young­sters," Oliv­er said. "We tend to pay at­ten­tion to the adult as­pect of de­vel­op­ment and al­ways want the fin­ish prod­uct and not be in­volved in the start­ing of the prod­uct. For me it is more en­joy­able coach­ing the youths. "The in­struc­tors were of the high­est lev­el and they brought a whole lot of wis­dom and un­der­stand­ing on how to deal with kids. One of the key as­pects for it was let­ting us know that the game it­self is the great­est teacher at that age. The way the in­struc­tors pre­sent­ed the course to us was a stand out. They al­lowed us to in­di­vid­u­al­ly grow in­to it and see the whole pic­ture of coach­ing at that lev­el." Oliv­er said he was grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty put for­ward by the TTFA with the stag­ing of the course. "I feel it was great to see the TTFA part­ner­ing with Con­ca­caf and bring­ing the course to us. I al­ways feel it's re­al­ly good that the play­ers who are in­volved in the Pro League now and who un­der­stand the mech­a­nism of the play­ers cur­rent­ly in the coun­try to be in­volved in coach­ing. And with play­ers like my­self, Hec­tor Sam, Ker­ry Bap­tiste and Joel Gib­bons, if we can con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing our knowl­edge on the coach­ing side, who knows one day we can go on to work­ing as a coach with the na­tion­al se­nior team or one of the na­tion­al youth teams," Oliv­er said.

Lat­apy's Scot­tish club on ver­ge­of his­toric qual­i­fi­ca­tion

For­mer na­tion­al cap­tain and head coach Rus­sell Lat­apy is on the verge of help­ing Scot­tish Pre­mier League club In­ver­ness Cale­don­ian This­tle to a his­toric achieve­ment as they moved to with­in one win of se­cur­ing Eu­ro­pean qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the first time.

In­ver­ness were 2-1 win­ners over Dundee Unit­ed on Sat­ur­day, mov­ing sev­en points off their clos­est ri­vals.

Lat­apy is the as­sis­tant coach at In­ver­ness and is ex­cit­ed about the prospect of his side play­ing in Eu­rope next sea­son but warned his play­ers that the job is not quite over.

"There's nev­er enough done when you've still got games re­main­ing," Lat­apy told the Scot­tish Press.

"We've put our­selves sev­en points ahead of Dundee Unit­ed and we go in­to every game be­liev­ing we can win it. "We now go in­to Dundee on Sat­ur­day and we'll pre­pare the team that gives us the best pos­si­ble chance to win the game. We're de­light­ed to be this far up the ta­ble. It's a mas­sive step for the club."

An­drews makes Scot­tish League Team of the Year at age 39

He may be long re­tired from the in­ter­na­tion­al game but for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er Mar­vin An­drews still has a big ap­petite for the game. An­drews en­joyed a sol­id sea­son for Scot­tish club Mon­trose and was last week named to the Scot­tish League Two "Team of the Year."

The 39-year-old An­drews would have pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed sim­i­lar ho­n­ours while at Raith Rovers and Glas­gow Rangers in the high­er di­vi­sions of Scot­tish foot­ball pri­or to the 2006 World Cup. An­drews moved to Scot­land in 1997 to join Raith Rovers–to whom he has re­turned twice–af­ter play­ing for ECM Mo­town, San Juan Jabloteh and Mal­ta Carib Al­cons in T&T.

An­drews went on to play for Liv­ingston, Rangers, Hamil­ton Aca­d­e­m­i­cal, Queen of the South, Wrex­ham, Kirk­in­til­loch Rob Roy and Al­bion Rovers be­fore spend­ing last sea­son with For­far Ath­let­ic in League One.

n Shaun Fuentes is the di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion–shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com