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Trinidad and Tobago celebrate Dantaye Gilbert's goal against Cuba in a Concacaf Nations League match at Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacolet, Tobago on Monday, October 14th 2024.
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I still remember the day Dennis Lawrence headed the Soca Warriors into the World Cup. It was a hectic afternoon in the office and a crazy one outside as the events in Bahrain in 2006, sent this country mad.

As team captain, Dwight Yorke was very much at the heart of what happened on the pitch that day. And 18 years later, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) wants him to be part of another “miracle.”

New TTFA president Kieron Edwards says Yorke is the “ideal choice” to lead the national team at this stage.

He and his executive are entitled to their opinion. And maybe Yorke is ideal for the TTFA bosses for what already appears to be a one-off job.

“I think this project for our executive and for Dwight is about qualifying for the World Cup. It’s qualifying for the World Cup or nothing,” was how Edwards framed the deal with Yorke in an I95.5FM interview on Saturday.

“I am sure I know Dwight’s pride. He will not stay on with the TTFA or with any club if he has failed to live up to his high standards,” Edwards added.

If I read those words correctly, neither party is thinking about a long-term relationship. Maybe more clarity will come when Yorke eventually speaks publicly.

This is a big opportunity for Yorke, a potentially career-altering one.

Illustrious as his playing career was, the former goal-scoring Manchester United title-winner has been given precious little opportunity to prove himself as a coach. His one stint in Australia with Macarthur FC was short-lived and ended in discord and court. So getting T&T to the World Cup as coach would be a huge addition to his CV and potentially open up doors previously closed to him in Europe and elsewhere. From his perspective, taking the T&T job is a no-brainer, especially since Jamaica just passed on him in favour of Steve McClaren.

But does hiring Yorke now make as much sense for the progress of local football?

Every football country wants to play at the World Cup finals. And there are rich financial rewards for getting to the showpiece event. For the last World Cup in Qatar, teams received US$1.5 million just for qualifying. For playing in the group stage, they got US$9m.

One could understand, therefore why qualifying for the finals in the USA, Mexico and Canada would be a target for the Edwards administration, especially with the qualification process in CONCACAF not involving those three host countries, who are currently the three strongest in the region.

But should hiring a coach essentially for the sake of making the World Cup really be the goal of the TTFA at this time?

Bear in mind that T&T does not have much of a World Cup pedigree—there has been just one appearance in the Finals. And the national team has not historically been among the world’s top football countries. Their highest-ever ranking was 25th. But currently, the Soca Warriors are at 102 behind Palestine and Kosovo. That is just four places above their lowest-ever ranking of 106.

The point is that it will be asking an awful lot of Dwight Yorke, in the infancy of his coaching career and with no working knowledge of the current players in local football, to take a team with less talent and experience than the group he captained in 2006 to reach the next World Cup. In 2006, Warriors coach, Dutchman Leo Beenhakker was a veteran in high level football management. And he had players with top-level European experience to work with in Yorke, Shaka Hislop, Russell Latapy and Stern John.

If Yorke is not to be part of the long-term coaching plan of the TTFA and merely a figure in the medium-term planning, then was it prudent to remove Angus Eve at this point?

Just remember that Eve took over the Warriors during the Covid-19 pandemic when literally no competitive football was being played. He literally had to start from scratch. But in his time, the national side went from being unable to beat the Bahamas in World Cup qualifying to reaching the quarter-finals of the CONCACAF Nations League, and even defeating the USA. Ironically, Eve’s last match in charge was a 7-1 win over the same Bahamas in the latest round of qualifying for World Cup 2026.

With the many limitations with which he was faced, including being limited in the players of T&T parentage he could recruit, Eve was in the process of compiling a pool of players and developing a system upon which more could be built eventually.

Pragmatic in his style, he may not have been the man for the job in three or four year’s time. But Eve was doing the necessary dirty work that was required, given the low state of the national team.

Getting T&T to the level of regular World Cup contenders in CONCACAF will not happen overnight and will require methodical planning and patience both from the TTFA and the coaches they hire. World Cup qualification by itself will not fix what ails the game here.

Only time will tell whether the Dwight Yorke move will be a success. But even if it is in the short term and T&T got to the next World Cup, what comes after will matter much more than what happens next year or in 2026. Remember, reader, how T&T football fell of the proverbial cliff post-Germany 2006.

That is not he kind of history that anyone in the local game could afford to see repeated.


SOURCE: T&T Express