CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – For­mer T&T strik­er Stern John has been ap­point­ed head coach of the St Lu­cia se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team. This was con­firmed by the St Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion on Sunday.

John, who has al­so served as the head coach for the An­guil­la men’s se­nior na­tion­al team, an as­sis­tant coach for his coun­try’s se­nior men’s team, and head coach of the T&T U-17 men’s team, said his aim would be to im­prove St Lu­cia’s per­for­mance in the sport.

“A new jour­ney be­gins this month and I be­lieve that with the right mind­set and with a prop­er, cal­cu­lat­ed ap­proach with the nec­es­sary sup­port, we can put St Lu­cia back on the foot­ball map in our re­gion,” he said.

“His­to­ry shows that this is­land has pro­duced some qual­i­ty play­ers in the past who have played pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball in Eu­rope in coun­tries such as Eng­land and Por­tu­gal. This is ev­i­dence that there are tal­ent­ed and ca­pa­ble play­ers in St Lu­cia’s foot­ball. It’s just to get that be­lief again among the play­ers and peo­ple of St Lu­cia again.

“The Pres­i­dent and the FA have a clear vi­sion of what they want to achieve and the di­rec­tion they want to take the foot­ball. I will give it my all to try and bring some lev­el of re­spect and sta­bil­i­ty to the Na­tion­al Team and hope­ful­ly some smiles to the peo­ple of St Lu­cia again,” John added.

His first or­der of busi­ness with be prepar­ing the team for its open­ing CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League en­counter away to Do­mini­ca on June 9 and at home to An­guil­la on June 12.

John, a for­mer stand­out play­er for T&T, ap­peared at the 2006 FI­FA World Cup fi­nals for the So­ca War­riors.

At club lev­el, John has won the T&T Pro­fes­sion­al League ti­tle with Cen­tral FC in 2017 and a year lat­er led the club to the win­ners row in Group B of the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship Group stage, help­ing the team to ad­vance to the fi­nals where they placed fourth.

In 2016, as as­sis­tant coach, John helped to guide Cen­tral FC to the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­onship ti­tle.

As a play­er, he amassed 70 goals in 115 in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ances for his coun­try and is cur­rent­ly 18th on the list of lead­ing goal scor­er in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball.

John played in the Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship for Birm­ing­ham City, win­ning the club’s lead­ing goal scor­er award in 2003, and was al­so a mem­ber of sev­er­al oth­er clubs, in­clud­ing Not­ting­ham For­est, Sun­der­land, Crys­tal Palace, Der­by Coun­ty, Coven­try City, Southamp­ton and Bris­tol Rovers. He won an Eng­lish Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion win­ners medal with Sun­der­land in 2007

John won the Amer­i­can Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) Top scor­er award in 1998, with 26 goals for Colum­bus Crew in 1998, al­so earn­ing se­lec­tion on the MLS All-Star team that year. CMC