A sell-out by the Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee of Jinelle James- Di­rec­tor of Women's Foot­ball, Dion La Fou­cade- Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, James Thomas- Na­tion­al Women's Team coach and Richard Chi­napoo- a for­mer na­tion­al play­er, is how some en­raged for­mer play­ers and cur­rent lo­cal coach­es have de­scribed the an­nounce­ment of Welsh­man Char­lie Mitchell as the new as­sis­tant coach to the T&T women's team.

Al­most two months af­ter an agree­ment was reached be­tween the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion (UF­CA) and the Robert Hadad-led FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to ap­point an all-lo­cal staff to as­sist Thomas, comes the un­pre­dictable re­cruit­ment of Mitchell, who will on­ly be avail­able for Se­nior Women’s Na­tion­al Team camps and com­pe­ti­tions.

He fills the of­fi­cial po­si­tion of as­sis­tant coach and per­for­mance an­a­lyst and will make his ser­vices avail­able to the coun­try's se­nior men's team when need­ed.

Mitchell, a British-born coach and com­pa­tri­ot Thomas, to­geth­er with the new­ly ap­point­ed Goal­keep­ing coach James Baird, a Scot­tish-born, who have played pro­fes­sion­al­ly in T&T Pro League with To­ba­go Unit­ed, North East Stars and Cen­tral FC, from 2007 to 2016 as a goal­keep­er, are the three for­eign coach­es hired.

British-born Joanne Daniel is the new team man­ag­er, while Ter­ry John­son-Je­re­mi­ah (Equip­ment Man­ag­er), At­i­ba Downes (Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Coach) and Aqilya Gomez (Re­hab Spe­cial­ist) are the lo­cal ap­point­ments.

Mitchell's ap­point­ment has sparked rage and dis­ap­point­ment among the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty, many of whom ac­cused the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee of sell out. A high-rank­ing Women's Foot­ball League ad­min­is­tra­tor who spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said: "If they want­ed to se­lect Richard Hood and Der­nelle Mas­call for the po­si­tions of as­sis­tant coach­es, as they did be­fore, then they would have done so. They couldn't have been in­flu­enced by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee mem­bers be­cause they are the ones with the foot­ball knowl­edge.

And fur­ther­more, they could not have been in­flu­enced by the na­tion­al coach be­cause he too, does not know any­thing about the lo­cal coach­es."

In an ef­fort to find out why the de­ci­sion was changed from the orig­i­nal agree­ment to ap­point an all-lo­cal tech­ni­cal staff to sup­port coach Thomas, Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to Fou­cade, who said that our ques­tions need to be di­rect­ed to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) me­dia of­fi­cer, while ef­forts to con­tact James (Jinelle) on the same is­sue al­so proved fu­tile.

Guardian Me­dia Sports al­so reached out to nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee mem­ber Nicholas Gomez via a What­sApp mes­sage on the mat­ter. He read it but did not re­spond.

Hood, a for­mer Tran­quil­i­ty Sec­ondary School In­ter­Col goal­keep­er, who saw him­self as the front-run­ner for the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant coach, said he was not tak­en by sur­prise be­cause when he did not get a call or a mes­sage for more than a month from the Com­mit­tee af­ter be­ing in­ter­viewed, he de­cid­ed to pre­pare for the worst.

Hood, who took the coun­try's Un­der-20 Women's team to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the 2020 CON­CA­CAF U-20 Women's Cham­pi­onships in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, was two months ago was ap­point­ed as the as­sis­tant coach to Thomas. How­ev­er, his ap­point­ment sparked con­tro­ver­sy be­cause of a lack of trans­paren­cy in the se­lec­tion process.

The Po­lice FC coach is­sued a re­lease on Thurs­day re­gard­ing the re­cent de­vel­op­ment. It stat­ed: "I view this as a slap in the face of all lo­cal coach­es in gen­er­al and in par­tic­u­lar, those that have been work­ing in the said pro­gram tire­less­ly for years with­out re­mu­ner­a­tion. Coach­es like Mar­lon Charles, Ra­jesh Latchoo, Ja­son Spence, Glen­non Fon­cette, Chris Bai­ley and my­self, to name a few. I have worked in this pro­gramme since 2008. I was As­sis­tant coach of the 2010 U17 team that com­pet­ed in the World Cup in T&T. That team holds the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the on­ly team from this coun­try to win a game at any World Cup tour­na­ment. I led the se­nior women’s team to a run­ner up po­si­tion in the CFU Olympic Qual­i­fiers in 2011, which was the great­est dis­ap­point­ment of my coach­ing ca­reer so far. I was in charge of the team that com­pet­ed in the Pan Amer­i­can games the said year, were most note­wor­thy, we drew with the mighty Mex­i­co 1-1.

Lo­cal coach­es have worked as­sid­u­ous­ly to im­prove the stan­dard of play with ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed re­sources and we have fool­ish­ly ac­cept­ed it be­cause of the love of the coun­try and the play­ers. There was nev­er mon­ey when a lo­cal coach was at the helm. I await the pub­lic out­cry and to hear what our Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion has to of­fer re­gard­ing this sit­u­a­tion if any­thing."

Mean­while, Jef­fer­son George, the in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the UF­CA told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he could not ex­plain why there was a change to in­clude for­eign coach­es in the re­cruit­ment process, not­ing fur­ther that there are too many unan­swered ques­tions.

George said news of the new as­sis­tant coach, was fol­lowed by promis­es by many lo­cal coach­es to nev­er again con­sid­er ac­cept­ing jobs to coach in T&T. much less ap­ply for a job.

He said that what is al­so baf­fling is the fact that Mitchell ap­pears to be less qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced than most of our lo­cal coach­es. How­ev­er, in­for­ma­tion reach­ing Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed shows that Mitchell is the hold­er of UE­FA's A and B Li­cens­es, he holds an MSc and BSc in Sports Coach­ing, and an Ad­vanced Diplo­ma in Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment (lev­el 7).