The ap­point­ment of An­gus Eve as the new na­tion­al coach is be­ing hailed as the right choice to lift T&T foot­ball and take it through the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup cam­paign said hard-tack­ling "Strike Squad" de­fend­er Bri­an Williams, and echoed by Brent San­cho, al­so a formr na­tion­al de­fend­er who has played with Eve dur­ing his hey-days and know him very well as a coach.

"Gus" as he is com­mon­ly called in lo­cal foot­ball cir­cles, re­placed sacked coach, Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick, whose es­ti­mat­ed US$20,000 per month salary has been sight­ed as a fi­nan­cial bur­den on the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), ac­cord­ing to Trevor Gomez, an in­stru­men­tal mem­ber of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC), while ad­dress­ing the me­dia dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Mon­day.

Un­der Fen­wick, a for­mer Eng­land World Cup play­er, the T&T So­ca War­riors were boot­ed out of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers af­ter the first round, fin­ish­ing sec­ond in Group F, in a tour­na­ment in­which on­ly the top team was ad­vanc­ing to the next round. The team's un­der-par per­for­mance was sum­marised by wins against Guyana (3-0) and St Kitts and Nevis (2-0) and drawn match­es against Puer­to Ri­co (1-1) and the Ba­hamas (0-0).

Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er who has coached at the na­tion­al lev­el with the Un­der-15s, U-17s, U-20s and at the U-23 lev­els, is set to com­mence train­ing du­ties soon in prepa­ra­tion for T&T's open­ing match of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup Tour­na­ment against Montser­rat on Ju­ly 2 in the USA.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day, Williams, the rugged "Strike Squad" de­fend­er of 1989, said on be­half of his team: "The mem­bers of the 1989 Strike Squad Com­pa­ny, through its ex­ec­u­tive, con­grat­u­late and ful­ly en­dorse the present­ly ap­point­ed in­ter­im T&T na­tion­al se­nior men's foot­ball team head coach An­gus Eve and his staff. We feel once more a sci­ence of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, pride and pa­tri­o­tism, hav­ing a lo­cal staff main­ly per­sons who served this coun­try's foot­ball at all lev­els over the years.

"This feel­ing al­so brings to us the call for a uni­fied T&T coach­es minds for the prop­er de­vel­op­ment and restora­tion of our foot­ball from the ground up."

San­cho, on the oth­er hand, said: "One thing I know about An­gus as a team­mate and now as a coach is that he is an in­tel­li­gent enough per­son to know ex­act­ly what sit­u­a­tion he is get­ting him­self in­volved in. He would have tak­en a holis­tic look at what is be­ing asked of him and more im­por­tant­ly what the task is. I think he would have looked at it and be­lieved he could be suc­cess­ful do­ing this task. There is no coach, and I know An­gus as an ex­treme­ly, ul­tra-com­pet­i­tive in­di­vid­ual, that would go in­to a sit­u­a­tion think­ing that they would fail."