​In the af­ter­math of failed World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion bids by the coun­try’s U-17 boys' and girls' teams, T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards has sum­moned new tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Devin El­cock to de­vel­op pro­grammes to en­sure that the flaws that are ev­i­dent with the coun­try’s youth teams are cor­rect­ed and progress made at in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

​Re­flect­ing on the U-17 girls’ fail­ure to progress from Group F in Cu­ra­cao, which took place from Jan­u­ary 24 to Feb­ru­ary 2, and the U-17 boys’ third-place fin­ish at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, Ed­wards ad­mit­ted a "holis­tic ap­proach" is re­quired. This strat­e­gy will en­com­pass na­tion­al coach­es, the in­flux of pri­vate foot­ball acad­e­mies, and the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL).

Ed­wards told Guardian Me­dia Sports Sat­ur­day that a key so­lu­tion is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Na­tion­al Youth League, a move rec­om­mend­ed by FI­FA and Con­ca­caf. The FA al­so plans to "dig deep" through stake­hold­er meet­ings and an in­creased fre­quen­cy of coach­ing cours­es.

​“The idea of the Na­tion­al Youth League has been around for six months now. It's one of the rec­om­men­da­tions made by CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA, in terms of our re­struc­tur­ing," Ed­wards said. "I don't want to let too much out of the bag when it comes to our strate­gic plan, but the em­pha­sis on hav­ing our Na­tion­al Youth League, hav­ing play­ers with one team for a six-month pe­ri­od, where the coach can give his phi­los­o­phy, where we can have dis­cus­sions with all the clubs in the Na­tion­al Youth League in terms of where we go, what's best prac­tice. I think that's re­al­ly where the is­sue is.”

​Ed­wards em­pha­sised that these fail­ures should not be viewed in iso­la­tion. “We need to be truth­ful to our­selves. There are lots of is­sues that have been hap­pen­ing for the last 15 years in our youth de­vel­op­ment that we need to fix. It's not any­thing iso­lat­ed. It has to be a holis­tic change.”

​One glar­ing ob­ser­va­tion Ed­wards not­ed was the phys­i­cal stature of the cur­rent play­ers, com­pared to those in 2001. “When we lined up against a Mex­i­can team then, we were the big­ger team. When you look at Ja­maica still, when you look at their score com­pared to the oth­er scores, they have one of the big­ger teams at the un­der-17 lev­el, at the youth lev­el on the whole. Our play­ers are now be­ing de­vel­oped small­er.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, “We have been do­ing stud­ies on it in terms of go­ing to acad­e­mies and see­ing what their train­ing sched­ules are, and how they train. We see the de­fi­cien­cies in many parts. Not just on the phys­i­cal side, but on the tac­ti­cal side as well. Many of the na­tion­al coach­es are say­ing that play­ers are com­ing with less tac­ti­cal aware­ness than in the past. It's one based on so many tour­na­ments scat­tered all over the place. There are coach­es and teams that are tak­ing young play­ers, mov­ing them from team to team to win a tour­na­ment. There's no em­pha­sis on build­ing play­ers at a tech­ni­cal lev­el. When you look at where our play­ers are go­ing now to ap­ply their trade, when you con­sid­er pro­fes­sion­al, we have too many kids or play­ers go­ing out to play USL. No knock on the USL League, but we can't have all our top na­tion­al play­ers leav­ing the coun­try and go­ing out to play USL. We need to con­tin­ue to fight for MLS places. We need to con­tin­ue to fight for Eu­ro­pean places.”

The un­der-17 boys’ team fal­tered ear­ly in their qual­i­fiers, go­ing down 1-0 to Bar­ba­dos, be­fore beat­ing Saint Mar­tin 1-0 and then Sint Maarten 8-0. Their fi­nal match end­ed in a gut­sy 2-1 loss to the Mex­i­cans, who even­tu­al­ly topped the group and qual­i­fied for the World Cup.

Coach Ran­dolph Boyce’s team com­prised main­ly of the top play­ers in last sea­son’s SS­FL. Ed­wards ex­plained, “They may be the best in the Col­lege League, but when you match them up with play­ers their age and their peers, you see where they're lack­ing, be­cause for three months, the whole coun­try might be giv­ing them all these prais­es. But when you look at the broad­er pic­ture, we're lack­ing. That's why I con­tin­ue to say that the sec­ondary school foot­ball league is not a de­vel­op­ment league, but rather, it cre­ates com­pe­ti­tion.”

​Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Devin El­cock has been tasked with host­ing "frank dis­cus­sions" be­tween the FA, acad­e­mies, and clubs to align their goals.

“We need to look at the time frame in which we get our na­tion­al play­ers to go in­to the na­tion­al pro­gramme. When you're talk­ing sec­ondary school foot­ball, play­ing from Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber, it's a strug­gle with school teams to have the play­ers train. And then you have lit­er­al­ly a two-month win­dow to get the team full-time,” Ed­wards said.

“It's some­thing we have to have dis­cus­sions and buy in with the school teams, the par­ents, the acad­e­mies, in terms of our top ath­letes, our top play­ers, in terms of the amount of con­tact hours with­in the na­tion­al set­up we have. Those are some of the things that I would have seen com­ing out of these qual­i­fiers, both from the girls and the boys. Next thing, we have to get in the mind­set of the tour­na­ment.

“I think we would have failed when it comes to tour­na­ment foot­ball and readi­ness and mind­set, in terms of get­ting out there, at least start­ing a tour­na­ment and show­ing you get three points in your first game. I think the mind­set needs to change across the board, and we need to start from the youth.”