Alvin?Corneal

Hav­ing looked at the jour­ney for the next two match­es, the task must be ap­proached with the view of fi­nanc­ing pri­mar­i­ly, know­ing ful­ly well that the TTFA is se­ri­ous­ly in­debt­ed to coach­es who have done ex­cel­lent work and have not yet been paid.

To add to this dilem­ma, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed on Thurs­day that a com­pa­ny is seek­ing a Court or­der to freeze the TTFA bank ac­count, un­til a debt of over $1.2 mil­lion is paid.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this debt may have been on the books well be­fore the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion had tak­en of­fice. But the debt must be paid, a pol­i­cy which we have recog­nised from the prin­ci­pled com­mit­ment when gov­ern­ments change hands.

So we have to ask our­selves how much mon­ey do we have in or­der to ho­n­our com­mit­ments to play­ers, coach­ing staff, ho­tel, air­fare, and prepa­ra­tion camps and friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al match­es pri­or to match days.

De­spite these ob­sta­cles, I would as­sume that the cho­sen coach will have to re­vert to view­ing the lo­cal play­ers who play in the T&T Pro League, the Na­tion­al Su­per League and the zon­al leagues.

While many will say the qual­i­ty be­ing pro­duced in these leagues is of a mod­er­ate stan­dard, it does not mean that there are no tal­ent­ed play­ers among the lot.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, the qual­i­ty of team­work in the pro­fes­sion­al tour­na­ment is short of what is ex­pect­ed, but ob­vi­ous­ly, there are quite a few out­stand­ing play­ers who can be in­vit­ed and tak­en through paces which can bring the nec­es­sary im­prove­ment to their al­ready es­tab­lished skill and cre­ativ­i­ty.

Four months of work un­der an or­gan­ised coach for lo­cal play­ers will be the ide­al to in­crease the en­thu­si­asm of those who were pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked, to make that ex­tra ef­fort to show their worth.

Five friend­lies dur­ing that pe­ri­od against teams like Den­mark, Bo­livia, Venezuela, Cana­da and Ja­maica will al­low the coach to as­sess their per­for­mances and the lev­el of im­prove­ment.

The re­sults may shock many who have not looked in that di­rec­tion in the past.

The new coach will now be able to judge these new boys against the pre­vi­ous ones, who pro­duced mod­er­ate and lethar­gic ef­forts on the field, as seen against Cos­ta Ri­ca and Hon­duras.

Fol­low­ing that, these guys may now be able to of­fer a new chal­lenge against the more ad­vanced coun­tries like Pana­ma and Mex­i­co.

If the progress brings a new pic­ture to our chances in the HEX, that is achieve­ment. If they don't, then we shall have a new look group with 13 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es in their reper­toire, all with vast ex­pe­ri­ence and rel­a­tive­ly young.

This will al­low us to en­joy two CFU fi­nals, two Gold Cup Tour­na­ments and the qual­i­fy­ing for the 2022 World Cup Fi­nals, know­ing much more than this pre­vi­ous group of play­ers whose in­con­sis­ten­cy was prob­a­bly their worst en­e­my.

Part II

If the progress brings a new pic­ture to our chances in the HEX, that is achieve­ment. If they don't, then we shall have a new look group with 13 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es in their reper­toire, all with vast ex­pe­ri­ence and rel­a­tive­ly young.