The im­pact of for­mer na­tion­al and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er Dwight Yorke as the new coach of the coun­try’s se­nior men’s team ap­pears to have not yet to­tal­ly sunk in.

A week af­ter a live-in camp for lo­cal play­ers at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, play­ers still seem to be rev­el­ling in the ex­cite­ment of hav­ing their com­pa­tri­ot as their gaffer.

Both mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no, who called it quits from the na­tion­al team af­ter a dis­agree­ment with for­mer head coach An­gus Eve, and at­tack­ing de­fend­er Alvin Jones are en­joy­ing the dif­fer­ence that Yorke and his staff of as­sis­tant coach­es Rus­sell Lat­apy, Derek King and Neil Wood from Eng­land, as well as Aus­tralian An­tho­ny Crea, who is the team’s strength and con­di­tion­ing coach, have brought to the team’s train­ing camp so far.

“His men­tal­i­ty and hard work—when you look at his ca­reer, it’s how he ex­celled at a lot of the clubs he played with, and now he is try­ing to im­ple­ment that in the guys for the last few days, and we’ve been go­ing good so far. We just want to con­tin­ue,” Moli­no ex­plained.

“This is a dream come true for not just me but the whole of T&T for one of our best and great­est play­ers to lead us to the doorstep of the World Cup. The train­ing has been in­tense, with new fresh ideas and al­ways try­ing to play on the front foot. I am just ex­cit­ed like the rest of the guys,” Moli­no said.

His team­mate Jones ut­tered sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, say­ing, “Just com­ing train­ing every day as a pro­fes­sion­al, to do your best or try and put your best foot for­ward day by day. He keeps en­cour­ag­ing us to do our best and chal­lenge the train­ing, so from my point of view, it’s a good sign from them.”

Both play­ers are ea­ger to play their first match un­der Yorke af­ter ex­pec­ta­tions of a friend­ly game dur­ing the re­cent FI­FA win­dow did not ma­te­ri­alise. The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ad­mit­ted it ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty se­cur­ing a match for the team due to on­go­ing Na­tions League match­es and oth­er chal­lenges. How­ev­er, pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards told the me­dia he has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to nail down an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter for the team out­side the FI­FA win­dow.
The T&T So­ca War­riors are sec­ond in Group B of the qual­i­fiers on four points from a draw (2-2) with Grena­da and a 7-1 vic­to­ry over the Ba­hamas.
The team will face St Kitts/Nevis in June in their third game.