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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Maturana among five candidates interviewed

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20170114

Fran­cis­co Mat­u­rana, the Colom­bian who coached the T&T team back in 2008-2009 is said to be among the can­di­dates vy­ing for the job of T&T na­tion­al se­nior men's coach as a re­place­ment for Bel­gian Tom Saint­fi­et.

Yes­ter­day, the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee of the TTFA which is be­ing chaired by for­mer na­tion­al play­er Dex­ter Skeene, first had to deal with the walk-out of one of its mem­bers, for­mer na­tion­al coach Bertille St Clair.

The To­bag­on­ian who made one of few ap­pear­ances at tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee meet­ings at the of­fice of the TTFA, Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um yes­ter­day, left dis­sat­is­fied. His po­si­tion will be tak­en by an­oth­er ex-na­tion­al coach Edgar Vi­dale, the Guardian Me­dia learnt.&nb­sp;

Guardian Me­dia un­der-stands that as the meet­ing pro­ceed­ed four oth­er coach­es were on the short­list to be in­ter­viewed, among them for­mer na­tion­al World Cup play­ers, de­fend­er Den­nis Lawrence and Rus­sell Lat­apy, along with Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick and St Lu­cian Stu­art Charles Fevri­er.&nb­sp;

Ac­cord­ing to our source Guardian Me­dia was told that Lat­apy was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to take over from Saint­fi­et, but with Mat­u­rana now in the mix Lat­apy chances be­came tough.

Mat­u­rana shot to pop­u­lar­i­ty by coach­ing lo­cal team Atleti­co Na­cional to the Co­pa Lib­er­ta­dores Cup in 1989. He is now a mem­ber of the FI­FA Foot­ball Com­mit­tee.

It is un­der­stood that apart from Lat­apy, in­ter­views were al­so con­duct­ed with Ter­ry Fen­wick, a for­mer Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al and the for­mer coach of lo­cal pro club San Juan Jabloteh and Stu­art Charles Fevri­er.&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;&nb­sp;

Ac­cord­ing to Fen­wick, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia just be­fore his in­ter­view, "The plight of T&T foot­ball is clear­ly isn't very good, were are plum­met­ing down the FI­FA rank­ings list, there's dis­ar­ray through­out the TTFA, we are fail­ing at all lev­els of foot­ball and that's not just with the na­tion­al se­nior team but all the youths teams be­low that and the ladies. That is clear­ly be­cause there are peo­ple and ap­point­ments that are be­ing made with peo­ple who are clear­ly not up to the stan­dard re­quired for in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball".

He cred­it­ed for coach Stephen Hart for his job and said, "A great job done by Stephen Hart, who res­ur­rect­ed foot­ball from the depths of three years ago".

He con­tin­ued, "T&T foot­ball need some­body stronger, some­body that is very fa­mil­iar with. It re­al­ly comes down to on­ly one per­son and that's me". He point­ed out that, "Stu­art Charles Fevri­er had a go at it be­fore in the past and failed. His style of foot­ball is not suit­ed for the type of play­ers that we pro­duced here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and it will cause more dis­rup­tion over time if it's a Stu­art Charles Fevri­er ap­point­ment. And clear­ly the re­la­tion­ship he's got with the pres­i­dent of the TTFA would be very un­healthy for our foot­ball".

&nb­sp;Saint­fi­et re­signed on Tues­day af­ter 35 days on the job claim­ing he did not re­ceive the sup­port of the T&TFA and its pres­i­dent David John-Williams.

Mean­while, it is un­der-stood a squad of 23 play­ers con­duct­ed an on­line vote via chat and placed Fevri­er in front with nine votes over­all. A play­er from the chat who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, re­vealed that Fen­wick re­ceived two votes and Hart the same amount. There was al­so a vote for An­gus Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al coach to be con­sid­ered for the So­ca War­riors top spot as well.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the play­ers, though will­ing to work with any coach cho­sen by the TTFA, had de­cid­ed to of­fer their sug­ges­tions to the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. Re­sults of their vote were not to be sub­mit­ted to the me­dia as agreed by the play­ers.

How­ev­er, the play­er, who were at the end of a damn­ing con­tro­ver­sy un­der Hart, has lashed out at re­cent claims that in­for­ma­tion sent to an on­line site prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed the out­come of the vote. Jan-Michael Williams who as­sumed the po­si­tion of team-spokesman, re­vealed that Hart, Fen­wick and Fevri­er were their choice for head coach, while Eve would have been an as­sis­tant to ei­ther.

They are al­so call­ing for the im­me­di­ate re­moval of team doc­tor Ter­rance Bab­wah and his as­sis­tant Dave Isaac due to lack of trust by the mem­bers. Both men re­signed re­cent­ly un­der Hart as they claimed the coach re­fused to take pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice from them, as they ob­ject­ed to the se­lec­tion of Williams (Jan Michael) for the FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF World Cup qual­i­fi­er against Hon­duras in San Pe­dro Su­la last year.&nb­sp;

In ad­di­tion to Skeene, as chair­man, the oth­er se­lec­tion com­mit­tee mem­bers are Edgar Vi­dal, who re­placed Bertille St. Clair who re­moved him­self from the Com­mit­tee, Muham­mad Isa, Dr. Alvin Hen­der­son, Er­rol Lovell and for­mer na­tion­al play­er Jinelle James.

WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

&nb­sp;


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