Soca Warriors coach Russell Latapy is expected back home today from holidays in Portugal for discussions with the T&T Football Federation over his coaching future.
The 40-year-old Latapy took charge of the Soca Warriors 2010 Concacaf Final Round South Africa World Cup qualifying campaign after the resignation of Colombian Francisco Maturana on April 8.
Under Latapy, T&T had one win, one drawn result and five defeats during the qualifiers while his contract ended at the end of T&T’s qualifying campaign in November.
The T&TFF executive along with its technical advisor, Fifa vice-president Jack Warner were then expected to meet to determine the fate of Latapy and his assistant Dwight Yorke two weeks later. However, no decision was taken and it was only last week that Warner in a press release indicated that unless the local body attained further financial support in 2010 it could be forced to turn to volunteerism in the area of coaching of national football teams.
With regard to the national coaching positions, Warner said the T&TFF and its technical committee had a meeting two weeks ago to look at various technical staffs for teams but the underlying factor continued to be funding. “Who will pay for the staff for these teams,” Warner asked.
“The kind of salaries we have been paying, there is nobody and surely not a Jack Warner, who will do this. “Unless we get some guarantor, some firm or some government who will pay these salaries... we will have to go back to volunteers who will do this for the good of the game.
“And that is the guided principle we will go by,” he said. “The T&TFF and I will be looking at this closer and by the second week in January we should be able to come to some kind of decision.”