T&T and North East Stars central defender Kareem Moses is set to pick up a one year contract with North American Soccer League (NASL) club FC Edmonton for the 2014 season.
“He has signed for one year and once they (Edmonton) like what they see in the season, they would sign him further,” said Stars head coach Angus Eve.
The NASL is the second tier of the US soccer pyramid, behind the Major League Soccer (MLS) and in front of the United Soccer League Professional Division (USL Pro), while FC Edmonton are only heading into their fourth season of professional football when the season kicks off in April.
Moses, 23, who will jet off to Canada in early February, said, “It is every player’s dream to play abroad…to see other places and make your family proud. So I’m really excited.
“It’s a great step coming from the Pro League and going to the next level, which will help me develop my skills and level of thinking towards reaching the highest level of the game.
That’s most important to me, and I’m also hoping that this move might even help me get a recall to the national team, being an international (based) player.”
Moses, who represented T&T at youth and Under-23 levels before making the senior team debut in 2012, played his last North East Stars match in December and will not be used this month, as Eve prepares to do without the talented defender.
However, Moses has been training regularly with the Sangre Grande club and will continue doing so until his move in February to maintain his physical fitness level.
“We are hoping that once he plays in that league (NASL) and get that sort of exposure; teams in the MLS would look at him and hopefully want to sign him,” said Eve. “We tend to try and be specific where we send players, unlike a lot of other teams who send a lot of players on trials and they come back because they don’t get through [something Eve believes can negatively affect the player,s CV],” said the former T&T U23 head coach and ex-T&T international.
“We had Sheldon Bateau (Belgium/KV Mechelen) out (in 2012) and Cornell Glen (India/ Shillong Lajong FC) out (in 2013) and we try to send the older players to those Asian countries, and send the younger players to North America and hopefully Europe.
We deal specifically that way, so that when we send a player, he is not just bouncing around from trial to trial to trial but going to specific places for specific reasons.”
Earlier this month, Stars forward Anthony Wolfe joined India’s reigning I-League champions Churchill Brothers SC for the remainder of the 2013-2014 season, following a successful trial. Wolfe, 30, is now the third T&T 2006 World Cup player to ever play in India after Cyd Gray (Pune FC—2008) and Densill Theobald (Dempo FC—2011-2012).
Eve signed San Juan Jabloteh forward Lemuel Lyons during the December/January transfer window as a quick replacement for Wolfe, but is yet to fill the void being left by Moses. “It’s a massive loss for us and that’s why I’m looking for a stopper now,” said the North East Stars coach.