Kieron Ed­wards, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), has said that sev­er­al op­tions are be­ing con­sid­ered as a re­place­ment for sacked tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor (TD) An­ton Corneal.

Corneal was fired last week as the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion re­vealed it had agreed to part ways with the long-serv­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor, who has al­so been in­volved heav­i­ly with coach­es' ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er func­tions with the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA.

Ed­wards, giv­ing rea­sons for the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to move in an op­po­site di­rec­tor to Corneal, said there is a need for a more hands-on tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor as Corneal’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties de­mand­ed him to be used in mul­ti­ple ar­eas.

Speak­ing on the I-95.5FM Ra­dio pro­gramme, Ed­wards said, “We part­ed ways with An­ton Corneal for a tech­ni­cal per­son, for a more hands-on, day-to-day tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor. A tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor who is on the ground. An­ton is great as a TD. He is ac­tu­al­ly part of FI­FA. An­ton’s strengths in terms of coach­es' ed­u­ca­tion, we will now sign on to the Con­ca­caf and FI­FA con­ven­tions in terms of our pro li­cense.

“I have a meet­ing with An­ton next week; he will be back in Trinidad next week, and I be­lieve he still has a role to play in T&T foot­ball, not as our TD, but he still has a role. The new TD is not di­rect­ly in­volved with the se­nior men’s na­tion­al team, nor the women’s na­tion­al team. They deal with youth foot­ball, de­vel­op­ment of our youth teams, so it speaks to re­al­ly hav­ing a TD who is go­ing in­to the trench­es, in terms of what we’re do­ing at the pri­ma­ry schools' lev­el, our youth-8 in terms of our de­vel­op­ment, and how we struc­ture,” Ed­wards said.

Corneal was hired as the TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor on an ini­tial two-year term in Feb­ru­ary 2022 un­der the then chair­man of the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, Robert Hadad. He re­placed Dion La Fou­cade, whose con­tract had come to an end.

Be­fore his ap­point­ment in 2022, Corneal pre­vi­ous­ly held the TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor po­si­tion for dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods for some ten years. He is a for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller who holds sev­er­al ti­tles as a cer­ti­fied coach ed­u­ca­tor and works with FI­FA as a FI­FA tech­ni­cal ex­pert, men­tor­ing tech­ni­cal di­rec­tors and con­duct­ing FI­FA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor lead­er­ship work­shops both on­line and in per­son. Corneal is al­so a CON­CA­CAF tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant, con­duct­ing coach li­cens­ing in the re­gion, and sits on the CON­CA­CAF coach­ing pan­el, as­sist­ing with the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of coach ed­u­ca­tion with­in the re­gion.

In the wake of Corneal’s sack­ing, the TTFA will be ex­pect­ed to ho­n­our a ter­mi­na­tion clause to pay him salaries for two months, while his as­sis­tant, Ra­jesh Latchoo, al­so called it quits, say­ing, “The TTFA re­leased An­ton, say­ing that they are go­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, de­spite the work An­ton has done for the coun­try and re­gion. I be­lieve in the vi­sion he has for the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try and re­gion, so I felt it best for me to step aside al­so.”

Ed­wards, who is de­ter­mined to en­sure that over­all de­vel­op­ment takes place in lo­cal foot­ball, said the coun­try would have gone through a rough patch for the last cou­ple of years "with re­spect to how it looks for our youth foot­ball and our youth Con­ca­caf, youth CFU", not­ing that it’s some­thing they are look­ing at se­ri­ous­ly.