The appointment of former national striker Dwight Yorke as head coach of the country’s senior national football team, which will spring into World Cup qualifying action next year, was received with thunderous cheers of support from the football fraternity.
Selby Browne, president of the Veteran Football Foundation of T&T, along with former Strike Squad captain Clayton Morris and Ron La Forest, who is revered as one of the better strikers to have been draped in the red, white and black of T&T have all expressed a feeling of joy that the right man was chosen from a magnanimous field of over 400 applicants for the top coaching job.
Yorke, equipped with a Level B coaching badge which he achieved in 2010, tasted sweet success in the area of coaching at Macarthurs FC in the Australian A-League in 2022-2023, after more than a decade of pursuing a career in Europe. He had hoped to land a coaching job at Aston Villa, the club he started his professional life in the English Premier League (EPL).
“I am all in favour of Dwight Yorke. The experience that Yorke would bring to the country I think no other coach could bring, plus he would encourage both players and fans. It has always been a mentality thing in T&T, as international coaches would receive more respect than local coaches. In this case, Yorke is local but he spent most of his life internationally,” said Ron La Forest, whose transition from player to coach and sees himself as a professor of the sport.
However, he believes Yorke would require a man on the ground to do scouting work locally while he sifts out players with T&T parentage internationally to add reinforcement to the team. La Forest is offering his capabilities in this field, noting that with his football brain, he can spot a player of national quality from a mile.
The 2026 World Cup will be hosted jointly by three Concacaf nations, namely Mexico, Canada and the United States, which it is believed, would make qualification chances easier for T&T. But Morris explained that T&T’s qualification would depend heavily on the cooperation of the football administration, providing the necessary resources that the team would need.
Morris said, “I feel very confident that Yorke will do a good job, but it is not just his ability that would enable him to do well, but rather the support of the TTFA to provide the resources. My concern also is that the quality of the players may not meet the quality of the coach with such a short time available.”
Morris added, “Dwight cannot come and wave a magic wand to get success so he would need the players to come up to scratch, he would have to be able also to get the players to trust him and play for him. The good thing though is that he knows the culture here in T&T and he would be able to demonstrate things, but the support of the administration would have a lot to do with his success.”
As captain of the then Strike Squad of 1989 which came within a point of qualification to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Morris was one of many players who guided and played the role of mentor to Yorke who joined the team as a teenager.
“I am elated to see a player who a guided as a young player, now assuming the role of national coach,” Morris concluded.
Meanwhile, Browne issued audio soon after Yorke’s appointment, saying the decision of the TTFA president and his executive to appoint Yorke as the national coach of T&T is most heartening and welcomed.
“It is a great opportunity for Mr Yorke, his assistant coaches and staff to take up the challenge. Surely Yorke would bring his vast knowledge and experience at the highest level of the game to benefit football. We expect this new chapter to be most motivational for the young footballers of T&T,” Browne said.
