For­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Rus­sell Lat­apy has been in­clud­ed in a four-man coach­ing staff to work along­side new T&T foot­ball coach Dwight Yorke for the 2026 FI­FA/Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers, which will re­sume in June next year. 

Derek King, who was ap­point­ed the care­tak­er coach fol­low­ing the sack­ing of An­gus Eve in Ju­ly, is al­so on the staff as an as­sis­tant coach with Eng­land’s Neil Wood, while An­tho­ny Crea is the strength and con­di­tion­ing from Aus­tralia, where Yorke had his first suc­cess­ful stint as a coach with Macarthurs FC in the Aus­tralian A-League back in 2022. 

Wood, born Jan­u­ary 4, 1983, is a for­mer mid­field play­er at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed who failed to make it to the first team due to in­juries. He was sent out on loan sev­er­al times, first to Bel­gian club Roy­al Antwerp, where he made his pro­fes­sion­al de­but in 2001, and lat­er to Pe­ter­bor­ough Unit­ed and Burn­ley be­fore he fi­nal­ly de­part­ed the club in 2004 for Coven­try City.

Up­on his re­tire­ment, Wood be­gan coach­ing, be­gin­ning at As­ton Vil­la in their acad­e­my be­fore mov­ing back to Unit­ed, where he rose through the ranks to be­come the Un­der-23 man­ag­er in 2019. 

Af­ter three years in the role, Wood was ap­point­ed man­ag­er of Sal­ford City, his first role in se­nior foot­ball. In 2023, Wood was sacked by Sal­ford, with the club 21st in the league.

Crea, on the oth­er hand, is a high-per­for­mance spe­cial­ist who is con­sid­ered one of Aus­tralia’s most ex­pe­ri­enced coach­es. 

He played a cen­tral role in de­liv­er­ing a swag of sil­ver­ware dur­ing his spell with Mel­bourne Vic­to­ry and has worked with some of the Aus­tralian game’s biggest names, in­clud­ing Har­ry Kewell, Mark Schwarz­er, John Aloisi, and Tim Cahill, just to name a few.

Since start­ing his ca­reer in 1997 at Mar­coni Soc­cer Club, An­tho­ny has been part of some of Aus­tralian foot­ball’s most mem­o­rable mo­ments, in­clud­ing the 2004 Olympics and the un­for­get­table 2006 FI­FA World Cup cam­paign that saw Aus­tralia reach the fi­nals for the first time in 30 years.

Yorke, a for­mer T&T, As­ton Vil­la, and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er, touched down on lo­cal soil last Fri­day car­ry­ing the bur­dens of qual­i­fy­ing the twin is­land re­pub­lic to the World Cup. It would be their sec­ond such time at the World Cup if Yorke could de­liv­er and will fol­low the coun­try’s 2006 ap­pear­ance in Ger­many, where they drew goal­less with Swe­den and were beat­en 2-0 by Eng­land and Paraguay. 

Yorke be­gan a live-in camp at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, yes­ter­day, mere days af­ter meet­ing with the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive and oth­er mem­bers. 

Dur­ing his first ses­sion with the team at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, he had the sup­port of Wood, while Crea was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive last night. The camp, which is sched­uled to run for the pe­ri­od of the FI­FA Win­dow, which runs from No­vem­ber 11–19, in­clud­ed some 30 lo­cal play­ers, in­clud­ing Tris­tan Hodge, who re­turned from in­jury re­cent­ly, Re­on Moore, who was left out of the coun­try’s last two match­es in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League against Cu­ba, as well as Jo­evin Jones and tal­ent­ed mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no, among many oth­ers. 

Lat­apy was an as­sis­tant coach to Yorke when Macarthurs FC claimed suc­cess in 2022.

The So­ca War­riors are cur­rent­ly in the sec­ond po­si­tion in Group B of the World Cup qual­i­fiers be­hind Cos­ta Ri­ca af­ter a 2-2 draw with re­gion­al ri­val Grena­da and a 7-1 de­mo­li­tion of the Ba­hamas both in June. They will next face St. Kitts/Nevis in the third match in June next year, need­ing to win to be among the top two teams to ad­vance.