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Sunday, July 20, 2025

TTFA pres says Soca Warriors need financial assistance to boost World Cup qualification chances

by

Sport Desk
33 days ago
20250617
Kieron Edwards, TTFA president.

Kieron Edwards, TTFA president.

With the T&T men’s foot­ball team in­to their fi­nal round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2026 World Cup, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Kieron Ed­wards says the na­tion­al team re­quires around US$9 mil­lion to help them prop­er­ly pre­pare.

The So­ca War­riors will face Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da, in the third and fi­nal round of qual­i­fiers for next year’s FI­FA World Cup, with the group win­ner earn­ing an au­to­mat­ic spot in next year’s World Cup to be held in Cana­da, Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States.

The two best sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers will move on to the FI­FA Play-Off tour­na­ment, sched­uled for March 2026.

Speak­ing on Sun­day dur­ing an in­ter­view on Is­ports on i95.5 FM, Ed­wards said the as­so­ci­a­tion would re­quire sub­stan­tial fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to get the team in peak con­di­tion.

“When you look at Cos­ta Ri­ca and how much they spent last World Cup, they spent US$12 mil­lion be­hind their team to qual­i­fy in the last phase.

“This is Cos­ta Ri­ca, I’m not talk­ing about USA or Mex­i­co where they have 23 play­ers and fifty some­thing staff mem­bers alone,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

“When we’re look­ing at per­sons in our re­gion, like Cos­ta Ri­ca and Ja­maica and what they do and the spend, we need to match that.”

He said while the TTFA was set to re­ceive some mon­ey from gov­ern­ment, it was well short of the re­quired fig­ure.

“We have a com­mit­ment of an ad­di­tion­al US$1 mil­lion from the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment with the Cab­i­net note, but at that time we didn’t know what we were get­ting our­selves in­to at this point and relook­ing that we will have to go back to the gov­ern­ment for some as­sis­tance.

“I tru­ly be­lieve any­where be­tween US$6 mil­lion to US$9 mil­lion should get us where we have coach­es go­ing. We’re talk­ing about send­ing coach­es to be per­son­al train­ers, get­ting our boys to peak per­for­mance…” Ed­wards said.

CMC


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