The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of a fur­ther 26 per­sons in tech­ni­cal po­si­tions for all the coun­try's na­tion­al teams rang­ing from Un­der-15s to se­niors in a re­lease on Thurs­day fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Board of Di­rec­tors at the FA’s head­quar­ters on Wednes­day in Bal­main, Cou­va.

These new ap­point­ments will join pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced se­nior men's coach Ter­ry Fen­wick and his as­sis­tant Derek King, and Un­der-17 and 20 women's coach Richard Hood and Maylee- At­tin John­son, the women's Un­der-20 team man­ag­er which brings the over­all staff ap­point­ments to date to 29.

The TTFA al­so ap­point­ed Dion La Fou­cade is the new tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of foot­ball.

How­ev­er, Jinelle James and Richard Piper are di­rec­tors of the women's and men's na­tion­al teams re­spec­tive­ly, while for­mer World Cup goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack is head of goal­keep­ing at all lev­els.

Fol­low­ing the ap­point­ments, the TTFA Pres­i­dent William Wal­lace ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the process that pre­ced­ed the var­i­ous ap­point­ments.

“It was a very long process. It was a very de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. The Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee would have brought for­ward their rec­om­men­da­tions to the board and the board is now de­cid­ing whether we go with those rec­om­men­da­tions or not,” Wal­lace told TTFA Me­dia dur­ing a break in the meet­ing on Wednes­day night.

William Wal­lace, TTFA Pres­i­dent

“Gen­er­al­ly every­one sit­ting in that room is more or less in­volved in that process. Their con­cern, of course, is for us to do bet­ter on the field of play so at the end of the day when we leave that room I hope we will have the best per­sons on board to be able to take us for­ward in terms of our foot­ball.”

“There have been ap­point­ments for­malised so far. It’s a mat­ter of re-or­gan­is­ing, For in­stance, ear­li­er to­day I met with one of the as­sis­tant coach­es of the men’s se­nior team. He un­der­stood clear­ly that as a new coach com­ing in that this coach will want to bring per­sons in who he is com­fort­able work­ing with. We sat and had a very good con­ver­sa­tion. Of course, he has a con­tract and we have to be able to work that out go­ing for­ward.

Wal­lace said, “In some oth­er in­stances there are al­so some con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with per­sons at the low­er lev­els. Those will have to be dealt with go­ing for­ward. But in many of the cas­es were able to re­tain some of those per­sons and based on the plans we have go­ing for­ward in terms of our tech­ni­cal ap­proach where we want to have the zones in­volved we are hop­ing we can ab­sorb some of those per­sons there.

Mean­while, Kei­th Look Loy, chair­man of the TTFA’s Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments and ex­pand­ed on the de­vel­op­ments.

He said, “We are in the mid­dle of get­ting it done. We have ap­proved an en­tire tech­ni­cal staff for the men’s se­nior team and some of our men and women youth teams. We have ap­proved a Di­rec­tor for each of the na­tion­al teams' de­part­ment, we have ap­proved a di­rec­tor for the women’s teams de­part­ment which is Jinelle James, while Richard Piper for the men’s na­tion­al teams de­part­ment and Nor­ris Fer­gu­son as club li­cens­ing di­rec­tor as well as Dion La Fou­cade as the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor."

Look Loy added, “Well we have al­ways said on com­ing in­to of­fice that we are not on a witch-hunt… that it is not a nat­ur­al cause of ac­tion that some who served un­der the David John Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion would not find a place un­der the um­brel­la of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion. So we have kept Stern John as one of the as­sis­tant coach­es of the Men’s Un­der-20 team along with An­gus Eve to head coach Derek King and Wes­ley Webb as the man­ag­er of the Men’s Un­der-17 team. As I said, we are look­ing at each per­son on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis try­ing to prop­er­ly judge their mer­its and what they can con­tribute to the pro­grammes and we are mak­ing de­ci­sions on that ba­sis.”

<Kelvin Jack as head of goal­keep­ing>

Look Loy point­ed out that, “Kelvin Jack is go­ing to be re­turn­ing to these shores and he is go­ing to be per­form­ing a three-fold role. He is go­ing to be an as­sis­tant coach in the men’s se­nior team, he holds a UE­FA B li­cense. He is go­ing to be the goal­keep­er coach, he holds a UE­FA A goal­keep­ing li­cense. And he is al­so go­ing to be head of goal­keep­ing. We are go­ing to in­tro­duce a goal­keep­ing pro­gramme that deals with goal­keep­ing, goal­keep­er coach­ing and goal­keep­er coach in­struc­tion from grass­roots lev­el right up to the tip of the tri­an­gle which is the se­nior men’s team.”

<Short-Term Con­tracts>

The state­ment con­tin­ued, “The de­ci­sion of the board which is a wise one, and it is a pro­pos­al of the tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee is that we give short-term con­tracts. What I mean by that is we give peo­ple a con­tract for the pe­ri­od of prepa­ra­tions to the end of their tour­na­ments. For ex­am­ple, the un­der-15 boys and girls teams play in Au­gust… the con­tract for the staff is un­til the end of Au­gust. The Women un­der 20 and 17 teams play in Feb­ru­ary and March re­spec­tive­ly and the con­tracts are to the end of those tour­na­ments. Then at the end, we sit with the staffs, we sit as a com­mit­tee, we sit as a board and we as­sess and make de­ci­sions. Do we go for­ward with this staff or with this coach or do we re­place any­one at all? That’s the way we will pro­ceed. If we do look to re­new peo­ple then we will use­ful­ly dis­cuss re­new­ing them for a full cy­cle which in terms of youth foot­ball is two years."

<TTFA Project 2026>

With re­gards to the or­gan­i­sa­tion's fu­ture project, “Project 2026 was unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved. The idea here is to give a lev­el of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence to the young men who were in the last Un­der 20 team. They are now go­ing to be 21 and the cur­rent un­der 20 team, they are now 19.. so an age band of 19 to 21-year olds and head­ing in­to 2026 to form from that core group a new na­tion­al team. The year 2026 is go­ing to be the first 48-team FI­FA World Cup in Cana­da, USA and Mex­i­co, Con­ca­caf is go­ing to have six places and we think it ju­di­cious to be­gin prepar­ing a hard­core now. We want to groom them. They have weighed sit­u­a­tions along the way. We have the CAC Games of 2021 the 2022 Pan Amer­i­can Games, we have the Olympic Games to come be­yond 2024.

“When we blood them like this yes in 2026 we may have the out­stand­ing 18-year-old, we may have the out­stand­ing 32-year-old but the core of that 2026 World Cup team is go­ing to be those boys who are now 19 to 21-years old. We are go­ing to form a team un­der that age band. We are go­ing to put them un­der the su­per­vi­sion un­der Ter­ry Fen­wick and his se­nior men’s na­tion­al team staff and we are go­ing to go for­ward with that."

<In­ter­na­tion­al Friend­lies for March win­dow>

Look Loy ex­plained, “We have had sev­er­al of­fers from Asian, Eu­rope and South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. We are look­ing at the qual­i­ty of the op­po­nents and quite frankly we are al­so look­ing at the match fees that we can get be­cause the TTFA needs to make mon­ey and the se­nior men’s na­tion­al team is the flag­ship and it could gen­er­ate fi­nance for the TTFA. It can pay for the play­er fees and so on. We do not want to du­pli­cate the ex­pe­ri­ence of play­ers past ad­min­is­tra­tions where they played, match fees were paid and the play­ers were not paid. We want to be care­ful with that and en­sure that the first per­sons to be paid from match fees are play­ers and staff.

“We are close to fi­nal­is­ing a cou­ple of match­es. These are go­ing to be re­spectable op­po­nents. We have to do well against them and then in the third win­dow then look for high­er-lev­el op­po­nents that will bring a big­ger match fee. The sec­ond win­dow, of course, is ded­i­cat­ed to the CON­CA­CAF 2021 Gold Cup play­offs."

TTFA TECH­NI­CAL STAFF AP­POINT­MENTS

Men's Se­nior Team

Kelvin Jack – As­sis­tant Coach/Goal­keep­er Coach

Os­win Birch­wood – Train­er/Physio

Michael Williams – Equip­ment Man­ag­er

Cap­tain Basil Thomp­son – Team Man­ag­er

(Ter­ry Fen­wich - Head­coach & Derek King As­sis­tant coach were pre­vi­ous­ly ap­point­ed)

Men’s Un­der -20 Team

Derek King – Head Coach

An­gus Eve – As­sis­tant Coach

Stern John – As­sis­tant Coach

Ross Rus­sell – Goal­keep­er Coach

Trey Hart – Train­er

Aaron Pol­lard – Team Man­ag­er

Men’s Un­der- 17 Team

An­gus Eve - Head Coach

Kei­th Jef­frey - As­stis­tant Coach

Clyde Leon - As­stis­tant Coach

Clay­ton Ince - Goal­keep­ing Coach

Adar­ryl John - Train­er

Wes­ley Webb – Team Man­ag­er

(Oth­er po­si­tions to be filled -

Physio and Equip­ment man­ag­er)

Boys Un­der-15 Team

Kei­th Jef­frey – Head Coach

Clay­ton Mor­ris – As­sis­tant Coach

Wayne Shep­pard – As­sis­tant Coach

Jef­fer­son George – Goal­keep­er Coach

Dex­ter De­mas – Team Man­ag­er

Women’s Un­der-17

Na­dia James – Man­ag­er

Richard Hood – Head Coach (pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced)

Women’s Un­der-15

Ja­son Spence – Head Coach

Der­nelle Mas­call – As­sis­tant Coach

Joel War­rick – As­sis­tant Coach

Trevor Not­ting­ham – Goal­keep­er Coach

Si­mone Ed­wards – Team Man­ag­er

Over­all ap­point­ments

Na­tion­al Teams Di­rec­tor – Richard Piper

Women’s Foot­ball Di­rec­tor – Jinelle James

Club Li­cens­ing and Com­pli­ance Di­rec­tor – Nor­ris Fer­gu­son

Head of Goal­keep­ing – Kelvin Jack

Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor – Dion La Fou­cade