  We explore the relevance of confinement in quark matter models for the
possible quark core of neutron stars. For the quark phase, we adopt the
equation of state (EoS) derived with the Field Correlator Method, extended to
the zero temperature limit. For the hadronic phase, we use the microscopic
Brueckner-Hartree-Fock many-body theory. We find that the currently adopted
value of the gluon condensate $G_2 \simeq 0.006-0.007 \rm {GeV^4}$, which gives
a critical temperature $T_c \simeq 170 \rm MeV$, produces maximum masses which
are only marginally consistent with the observational limit, while larger
masses are possible if the gluon condensate is increased.
