Af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly a decade in which the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has searched for a coach to take the coun­try to the FI­FA World Cup, it seems the as­so­ci­a­tion has got­ten it right this time.

At least, so says for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop, now a sports an­a­lyst.

In an In­sta­gram dis­cus­sion, His­lop said the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion en­dured a stum­bling pe­ri­od in which coach­es such as for­mer play­ers An­gus Eve and Den­nis Lawrence, as well as Cana­di­an-based Stephen Hart, were tried.

Yorke's ap­point­ment ap­pears to have brought hopes of a re­vival with the World Cup Qual­i­fiers that will com­mence in June next year with an en­counter against St Kitts & Nevis.

In two match­es to date, the So­ca War­riors un­der Eve have dropped two cru­cial points at the hands of a Grena­da in a 2-2 tie at home at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain be­fore re­bound­ing with a more-than-con­vinc­ing 7-1 de­mo­li­tion of the Ba­hamas, both of which, were played in June of this year.

The re­sults left the War­riors in sec­ond po­si­tion in Group B with four points, two be­hind lead­ers Cos­ta Ri­ca on six. Yorke's first as­sign­ment for the team's con­tin­ued cam­paign would see him in charge of an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match at home, a TTFA of­fi­cial said.

Fol­low­ing a day of meet and greet with mem­bers of the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive and oth­er stake­hold­ers at the of­fice of TTFA at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va on Sat­ur­day, Yorke dis­cussed a live-in camp with play­ers based at home. De­tails of the camp are cur­rent­ly be­ing worked out so that it could start next week.

Ac­cord­ing to His­lop: "I think it's need­ed, we've kind of stum­bled over coach to coach over the last four to five years, prob­a­bly dat­ing back to Stephen Hart when he was in charge, but I think the TTFA got it right this time, and this is with the great­est re­spect to our team­mates Den­nis Lawrence and An­gus Eve who've both been in charge of the team but re­sults re­al­ly didn't go their way.

Un­der Lawrence, the lanky de­fend­er who head­ed in the goal to se­cure the coun­try's en­trance to the World Cup in Ger­many with a 1-0 win over Bahrain, the So­ca War­riors had five wins, 19 loss­es and sev­en drawn ac­counts in 31 match­es. In these match­es, they con­ced­ed 53 goals and scored 36.

How­ev­er, Eve's record of 23 match­es - 11 wins, five drawn and sev­en loss­es - has seen the coun­try lose out on a chance to qual­i­fy for the Co­pa Amer­i­ca against Cana­da as well as their el­e­va­tion to the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League A.

Yorke, who had been job-hunt­ing for the last three years in Eng­land be­fore he land­ed the Macarthur FC club as­sign­ment which end­ed in con­tro­ver­sy, will now ex­pe­ri­ence na­tion­al team prepa­ra­tion as he takes charge of the So­ca War­riors on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

His­lop said, "Dwight start­ed with Macarthur FC in the Aus­tralian A-League as we know, he start­ed quite well then had a part­ing of ways with the then own­er and he has been look­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty and I think this has come at the right time for both Dwight and T&T. Giv­en the 2026 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, giv­en all that's at stake, and giv­en the fact that USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co are host­ing, I think it's one that we re­al­ly have to be in the qual­i­fy­ing for."

His­lop fur­ther ex­plained, "I think T&T is ex­pect­ing Dwight Yorke to lead this team to the World Cup, I think the big chal­lenge for Dwight com­ing in with this squad is that it is not a very tal­ent­ed squad, if I may say so.... cer­tain­ly on pa­per and re­sults would bear that out.

"Now how he is able to find the right pieces for this puz­zle is go­ing to be Dwight's biggest test. You've got the one bright light in Levi Gar­cia, but in na­tion­al teams gone by, I don't think we've been able to get the best out of Levi Gar­cia, we haven't been able to play to his strengths, we've been far too prag­mat­ic and that's not how we nat­u­ral­ly play our foot­ball in T&T, and that's not what the fans want to see."

His­lop played with Yorke, who was cap­tain for the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many from which the coun­try re­ceived a point from a goal­less draw with Swe­den in their open­ing match. There­after, iden­ti­cal 2-0 re­sults against Eng­land and Paraguay con­clud­ed a valiant ef­fort by the So­ca War­riors in Group B, in on­ly their first ap­pear­ance at the World Cup as the small­est na­tion.

That team fea­tured a blend of play­ers from both the vi­brant T&T Pro League as well as those ply­ing their trade abroad. His­lop ex­pects that with the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League sched­uled to re­sume at the end of the month, it will pose an ad­di­tion­al chal­lenge for the new coach, say­ing- " T&T Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball has not re­sumed since the pan­dem­ic in 2020, so now you're try­ing to put to­geth­er a na­tion­al team large­ly based on play­ers play­ing in T&T, but there is no mean­ing­ful league in T&T.

"The TTFA has plans to start one soon­er rather than lat­er, the soon­er that starts the bet­ter. This is a chal­lenge at sev­er­al dif­fer­ent lev­els for Dwight," His­lop said.