Nass­er Khan

Af­ter hon­ing his foot­ball coach­ing skills in Cana­da for a num­ber of years, his last as­sign­ment as that coun­try's na­tion­al men's se­nior team coach, 54-year-old Stephen Hart has been in the un­en­vi­able role as T&T's So­ca War­riors' newest na­tion­al coach. It's a po­si­tion he had longed for when he start­ed think­ing about plans to re­turn to the land of his birth.Ear­ly years be­fore, he head­ed off to Cana­da to fur­ther his stud­ies in his late teens and to hope­ful­ly con­tin­ue play­ing the sport he so loved.When the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFA) ex­pressed an in­ter­est in his ser­vices in 2013, a po­si­tion he keen­ly cov­et­ed, Hart jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty. To­day, he is at the helm of a group of se­nior play­ers, many of whom ply their skills around the world in var­i­ous teams and leagues all with dif­fer­ent styles of play­ing the game. There­in lies the un­en­vi­able chal­lenge of coach Hart, that of bring­ing to­geth­er as many as 20 se­lect­ed play­ers re­cent­ly cho­sen to rep­re­sent the T&T So­ca War­riors.

Al­though San Fer­nan­do is where his roots lie, Hart al­so spent time in To­ba­go where his par­ents moved to when he was 17. Among his rel­a­tives are cousins Gre­go­ry and Richard "Dick­ie" Hart, who both cy­cled for T&T, as well as mas­man, un­cle Ed­mond Hart. He is an avid Panora­ma fan and a keen sup­port­er of the Fon­claire steel­band. His first as­sign­ment came in Ju­ly 2013 when he be­came the sec­ond coach, af­ter Bertille St Clair, to take the War­riors in­to the knock­out stage of the Gold Cup com­pe­ti­tion.Hart grew up in the era of late St Bene­dict's Col­lege prin­ci­pal Dom Basil Matthews and with peo­ple like Leroy De Leon, War­ren Archibald, Steve David, Bob­by Sookram, Wil­fred Cave and Jan Stead­man as some of his lo­cal he­roes. He played for the un­der-14 ju­nior and se­nior teams.

Af­ter Matthews re­tired, the col­lege with­drew from the schools' com­pe­ti­tion to fo­cus on its aca­d­e­mics in­stead of foot­ball. At the age of 15, young Hart joined the pop­u­lar Ju­niors and Hur­ri­canes teams and played along­side Leroy Spann, Pe­ter Mitchell, Bert Nep­tune and Michael Mau­rice in the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. He then played with Tex­a­co be­fore head­ing off to Hal­i­fax, Cana­da, to pur­sue stud­ies in ma­rine ge­og­ra­phy."I al­ways liked the sea and thought I would one day re­turn to Trinidad and do en­vi­ron­men­tal re­source man­age­ment. In fact, in 1986 I ap­plied for a job hop­ing to be­come in­volved in coral reef man­age­ment and help­ing in the preser­va­tion of ma­rine life, but that didn't pan out," he said.Hart's first coach­ing gig came in 1989 at se­mi-pro­fes­sion­al team Hal­i­fax King of Don­air as play­er/coach. Ten years lat­er, his ca­reer re­al­ly took off when he was hired as a coach for No­va Sco­tia, an ice hock­ey coun­try and province, tak­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion in soc­cer to an un­prece­dent­ed lev­el there."There were 3,000 play­ers in the province when I start­ed, and there were 30,000 when I left," Hart said.T&T's lat­est round of match­es are cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the 2014 Caribbean Cup se­mi-fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing, and coach Hart has high hopes that his So­ca War­rior charges will put their best feet for­ward as he strives to put T&T on the world foot­ball stage once again.

Q: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

A: Born in San Fer­nan­do, grew up in Mara­bel­la and La Ro­maine.

What schools/in­sti­tu­tions did you at­tend?

San Fer­nan­do Boys' Gov­ern­ment School, same school as Michael Mau­rice and Bert Nep­tune; St Bene­dicts Col­lege; St Mary's Uni­ver­si­ty Hal­i­fax grad­u­ate 1985.

What teams did you play for?

T&T First Di­vi­sion: San Fer­nan­do Hur­ri­canes 1975-79; Tex­a­co FC 1979-80; San Fer­nan­do Strik­ers 1982; T&T Pre­mier League; Hal­i­fax Pri­va­teers 1981; Amer­i­c­as 1988-89; King of Don­air 1983-1998; and T&T Na­tion­al team, where I was se­lect­ed un­der Alvin Corneal in 1980 but de­part­ed soon af­ter for uni­ver­si­ty.

When and how did you get in­to coach­ing?

Just want­ed to help young­sters en­joy the game, so I vol­un­teered with chil­dren un­der 12 while still at uni­ver­si­ty.

Who are the peo­ple who in­flu­enced and in­spired you the most, in your ca­reer and in life in gen­er­al?

So many touched your life in a spe­cial way as you grow: some en­cour­age, some de­vel­op, some ed­u­cate. It's hard to sin­gle out in­di­vid­u­als. Ob­vi­ous­ly my fam­i­ly, fa­ther and moth­er, whom were al­ways sup­port­ive but nev­er in­ter­fered. My youth and se­nior coach Ken Headley, who was a deep thinker of the game and en­cour­aged me to do the same, and many of my team­mates, both lo­cal­ly and abroad. A gen­tle­man who gave

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me my first re­al coach­ing job, George Athana­siou, he took a chance on me.

Coach­ing has tak­en you to many coun­tries. As a coach, which coun­tries have you been to?

Wow! I have been to over 50 coun­tries and I al­ways go to foot­ball. How­ev­er, in study­ing foot­ball and coach­ing, I have been to Spain, France, Nether­lands, Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Ger­many and Por­tu­gal.

Who was your hero grow­ing up and why? Your favourite foot­ballers?

Lo­cal­ly, Leroy DeLeon, Pe­ter Mitchell, Leroy Spann, Leon Car­pette, Bert Nep­tune, Steve Khan. All had some­thing dif­fer­ent to ob­serve and learn from. Not to men­tion they were en­ter­tain­ing.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Pele, Beck­en­bauer, Overath, Cruyff and Maradona

What are some of your coach­ing achieve­ments?

Tak­ing Cana­da to a Gold Cup se­mi fi­nal (2007) and quar­ter fi­nal (2009). I lead Hal­i­fax King of Don­air as a play­er/coach, and coach to four con­sec­u­tive league ti­tles and six cups. How­ev­er, for me, that was not im­por­tant. The young play­ers who played un­der me and went on to rep­re­sent their coun­try and play pro­fes­sion­al­ly are way more im­por­tant achieve­ments. There were many and I was not the on­ly in­flu­ence, just hap­py to have con­tributed.

What is your coach­ing sched­ule for the next year, and what are your plans for the fu­ture?

My sched­ule is large­ly de­pen­dent up­on the fund­ing of the T&T foot­ball pro­gramme. At present, I can­not an­swer that ques­tion with any cer­tain­ty. How­ev­er, the CFU Tour­na­ments of Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber are a pri­or­i­ty. I will al­so as­sist if re­quired with the Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 teams.

What is a typ­i­cal prac­tice like?

It de­pends...un­like a club, the na­tion­al teams have lim­it­ed prepa­ra­tion time, usu­al­ly four days. Re­cov­ery and rest have to be mea­sured. Phys­i­cal­ly, we keep the play­ers sharp with speed and pow­er ex­er­cis­es in­cor­po­rat­ing the ball.

Our train­ing is usu­al­ly very spe­cif­ic and tac­ti­cal in na­ture, out­side of the phys­i­cal el­e­ment. We al­so work very hard at cre­at­ing work­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween the play­ing lines.

What is your coach­ing phi­los­o­phy?

I al­ways get scared at the word coach­ing phi­los­o­phy. The TEAM is the most im­por­tant fac­tor, no one per­son is more or less im­por­tant. Play for each oth­er, bring your qual­i­ty to the game, be dy­nam­ic, and play for the re­sult. I want us to con­trol the tem­po of the game when we are in pos­ses­sion. Sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness is im­por­tant for this. We should recog­nise when we need to build ver­sus counter. When we are not in pos­ses­sion, try to al­so ex­ert con­trol by forc­ing our op­po­nent to play un­com­fort­ably. If we don't have this bal­ance in how we play, we will be weak­ened as a team.

What are some of the things that need im­prov­ing in T&T's foot­ball?

Be­lieve me, I do not have all the an­swers, we have some ex­cel­lent minds here. Play­er de­vel­op­ment needs con­sis­ten­cy and con­ti­nu­ity across the board. It must be mea­sur­able and sub­ject to eval­u­a­tion with­out be­ing seen as crit­i­cism.

Coach­ing de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion are two dif­fer­ent things. It can­not be gen­er­al, we need to iden­ti­fy the strengths of our coach­es and place them where they can con­tribute and have the most im­pact. There are no se­crets...com­pete on the field, work to­geth­er off it. We need to work to­geth­er to make an over­all bet­ter prod­uct. By this, I mean both play­ers and the game...ad­min­is­tra­tors, man­agers, coach­es, play­ers, schools, clubs, ref­er­ees, grounds men, me­dia. Every­body work­ing for the good...the bet­ter­ment of the game.

I have not even touched on the oth­er po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic spin-offs of an ef­fi­cient prod­uct. A bet­ter prod­uct with con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­ment and pro­gres­sion means we all keep work­ing with­in the game.

Do you fore­see T&T mak­ing it to the World Cup again as we did in 2006?

Why not? But it needs care­ful plan­ning and nur­tur­ing with re­al­is­tic time­lines. We have the tal­ent. If we say right "Project 2022" and de­vel­op a macro/mi­cro plan, with con­sis­tent fi­nan­cial sup­port and var­ied in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure, it is very pos­si­ble.

What ad­vice would you give to the young peo­ple of T&T?

Ed­u­ca­tion comes in many forms, es­pe­cial­ly to­day, un­der­stand that learn­ing has no roof. De­vel­op your­self dai­ly and pur­sue your dreams with dy­nam­ic en­thu­si­asm and pas­sion.

Of all your ac­co­lades, prizes and awards which do you rate as ex­treme­ly spe­cial?

Noth­ing ma­te­r­i­al! Com­ing from T&T and mak­ing it in a for­eign coun­try as a coach and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of Cana­da. This is a bit iron­ic, I re­cent­ly had a young man who played for me, a qual­i­ty play­er, now a doc­tor, con­tact me and said, "I al­ways want­ed to thank you for the in­flu­ence you had in my life, es­pe­cial­ly those times when I want­ed to quit med­ical school."

What goals and or am­bi­tions do you still have?

To re­main in foot­ball and coach­ing as long as pos­si­ble. I would love to have a re­al pos­i­tive im­pact on T&T foot­ball. Qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup once again is the goal, pun in­tend­ed.

What mot­to do you live by, and what is your recipe for suc­cess?

Sim­plic­i­ty is ge­nius. Be com­pas­sion­ate with peo­ple but hard on prob­lems.

De­scribe your­self in two words, one be­gin­ning with S, the oth­er with H...your ini­tials?

Sim­ple and hap­py!