For­mer na­tion­al foot­ball coach and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Edgar Vi­dale will be award­ed the Cha­co­nia Sil­ver medal on Mon­day by Pres­i­dent Paula Mae Weekes, at 5 pm at Pres­i­dent's House in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain.

He was nom­i­nat­ed by the Vet­er­ans Foot­ball Foun­da­tion of T&T (VF­FOTT). The award should have tak­en place in 2021 but the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ruled it out.

The Cha­co­nia Medal is giv­en to peo­ple (cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens) who have per­formed long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to the coun­try tend­ing to pro­mote the na­tion­al wel­fare or strength­en the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

Vi­dale, the broth­er-in-law of for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller and coach Alvin Corneal, has been a house­hold name in T&T, as a for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller, coach, crick­eter and foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor.

The height of his ca­reer was coach­ing the now-fa­mil­iar na­tion­al foot­ball team of 1973 in the FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fi­er against Haiti in Port-au-Prince where the team scored five le­git­i­mate goals but they were dis­al­lowed. T&T lost 1-2 to the home team.

Vi­dale on Sun­day still re­mem­bered that con­tro­ver­sial match fol­low­ing which the of­fi­cials, ref­er­ee, José Rober­to Hen­ríquez of El Sal­vador and Cana­di­an lines­man James Higuet were sub­se­quent­ly both banned for life by the sport's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA.

Now 88, Vi­dale said he felt very hap­py and ho­n­oured to be re­ceiv­ing such an award.

"I am not sur­prised that I am get­ting the award but the one I am get­ting is what I am sur­prised about. It is a pret­ty dis­tin­guished award. It shows that my col­leagues and coun­try­men ap­pre­ci­ate what I have done over the years," Vi­dale said.

Apart from coach­ing ar­guably one of the coun­try's most tal­ent­ed foot­ball teams in a qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment, Vi­dale was al­so pres­i­dent of the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee, sev­er­al oth­er ti­tles.