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Thu, Mar

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Clayton MorrisClayton Morris has switched allegiance, leaving hometown club St. Ann’s Rangers as Youth Technical Director to hold the Technical Director post with TT Pro League debutant T&TEC FC for the upcoming 2011-2011 season but says his decision is focused on the development of football in Trinidad and Tobago.

“What I like is that the management (of T&TEC FC), Mr. (Peter) Mohan and others are really focused on the development of football,” said Morris who is also a former National assistant coach.

“I found it strange that they came to me at first,” the 49 year old continued. “…but after meeting with them, I understood their enthusiasm and that we share similar thoughts when it comes to the overall development of football and I think it augers well for football in Trinidad and Tobago.”

Morris who held the position of Youth Technical Director at Rangers for the past five years, said that his former employers didn’t share the same vision and that Rangers’ focus was mainly on the senior team and not from the ground up.

“My vision really is to help the overall development of Trinidad and Tobago football,” he said. “I’ve noticed through the years that players selected to make the National teams lacked true development.

We must go back to the youths and make sure they have what it takes for overall development in what we saw in players such as Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy.

I saw this need to go back and help the youths develop from the ground up and this is what I tried to develop at Rangers but management didn’t understand this and only focused on the senior team.

“And in this day and age of the football it was clear that we were doing something wrong at Rangers because when I asked the question—how many players does Rangers have on the national teams? We could only name one in the U-23s.”

T&TEC FC Manager Peter Mohan explained that the decision to contract the former Trinidad and Tobago international and United Petrotrin player in the capacity of Technical Director, was a smart choice.

“We looked at other possible candidates, however Clayton stands out as someone who worked with Petrotrin and played with them. Ninety percent of our players work with T&TEC and with a TD who understands that kind of situation, working and playing at such a level with a company, just as Clayton did at Petrotrin… weighed heavily in his favour,” said Mohan.

The T&TEC FC manager went on to add, “Also we believe that Clayton’s experience will assist in the duties of (head coach) Dexter Cyrus in preparing the team for the Pro League level. Cyrus is new to the Pro League level.”

Morris said that his first job is to keep T&TEC FC on the up momentum (after finishing Super League and Knockout runners-up in 2009 and Super League and Knockout Champions in 2010).

“I know that the Pro League is an entirely different situation from the Super League but I’m focused on helping that momentum and aiming for a top three finish this season.

But my main overall focus at T&TEC is to help players become all round athletes and I will be working in all departments from our Youth Teams, South Zone Team, U-21s to Pro Team and together with the management of T&TEC and the vision of the club, footballers can have some faith in the game,” ended Morris.