​For sev­er­al years, for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent and Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er has main­tained that there is no in­stant fix in foot­ball.

Fri­day, he re­peat­ed this sen­ti­ment as a form of sound ad­vice for foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors in T&T. His com­ments came on the heels of the part­ing of ways be­tween the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke. The for­mer T&T and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er was hired to lead the coun­try to the FI­FA World Cup last year.

Warn­er told Guardian Me­dia Sports he did not sup­port the ap­point­ment of Yorke at the time, cit­ing the strik­er’s lack of coach­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Well, it’s un­for­tu­nate that Dwight Yorke had to be pub­licly fired in the way he has been. And in some ways, Sun­shine to­day has to take the blame be­cause we at Sun­shine to­day high­light­ed the ar­ti­cle about his not be­ing paid and so on. And that he was look­ing for a job in South Africa.

“And then, of course, who is look­ing to em­ploy him, es­pe­cial­ly one like Dwight, who has not yet got­ten a his­to­ry of be­ing a suc­cess­ful coach. But I think if they had lis­tened to me in the be­gin­ning, this might not have hap­pened in the first case, be­cause in the be­gin­ning, I did say that while Dwight is a good foot­baller, he will need some help. And they could have helped Dwight by giv­ing Dwight a more es­tab­lished coach to as­sist him,” Warn­er said.

“They didn’t do this; they want­ed a quick win, which they did not get. And when you can’t qual­i­fy in the group that the T&T team was in, you can’t qual­i­fy in that group. And a coun­try like Cu­ra­cao, with 150,000 peo­ple, could qual­i­fy be­fore Ja­maica and T&T, it tells you some­thing.”

​Ac­cord­ing to Warn­er, these am­bi­tious for­mer play­ers need “coach­ing grey hairs” to suc­ceed at the World Cup lev­el. “I am say­ing again that they want­ed a quick win, a dif­fi­cult course, and they didn’t get it. So, I am not in favour of what they did. In so far as they did not pro­vide these coach­es who were good foot­ballers as they were, they didn’t pro­vide them enough tech­ni­cal and tac­ti­cal as­sis­tance.”

​Yorke’s fu­ture be­came un­ten­able af­ter the team fin­ished third in a group com­pris­ing Bermu­da, Cu­ra­cao, and Ja­maica. Un­der the tour­na­ment for­mat, on­ly the top team earned au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion, while the sec­ond-place team need­ed to be among the best run­ners-up to ad­vance to a play-off.

​Warn­er al­so not­ed that Yorke’s res­i­den­cy in Dubai made it dif­fi­cult for the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion to main­tain the re­la­tion­ship.

“He is now go­ing to try to get a job in South Africa, where I have some good friends. I hope he suc­ceeds, but if he does suc­ceed, wher­ev­er he suc­ceeds, he will have to live there. Live among the pairs, I mean, breathe with them, eat with them, drink with them, al­most sleep with them, to un­der­stand them ful­ly. And you can’t do this by day in Dubai, and coach­ing in T&T.”

​Warn­er, the founder of the for­mer T&T Pro League club Joe Pub­lic foot­ball club, be­lieves in­ter­im coach Derek King al­so needs sup­port. King has served as an as­sis­tant to Yorke, his pre­de­ces­sor, An­gus Eve, and sev­er­al oth­ers, dat­ing back to Stephen Hart’s tenure at the T&T se­nior na­tion­al team.

“I don’t think that Mr King is there to stay. I think he’s an in­ter­im fac­tor, an in­ter­im coach. And there­fore, I think that the quick­er they look to get some­thing on a per­ma­nent ba­sis, the bet­ter for them. But I don’t know if they have the fund­ing to do that, be­cause coach­es these days don’t come cheap; they are ex­pen­sive. And the bet­ter they are, the more qual­i­fied they are, the more ex­pen­sive they are.

“So while I think Mr King might be an in­ter­im mea­sure, I think they have to get their act to­geth­er quick­ly. Sad­ly, to say that, of late, it seems that fail­ure af­ter fail­ure is fol­low­ing the TTFA. But be that as it may, they have to find some benev­o­lent spon­sor who will take them in, even af­ter they have failed. Be­cause spon­sors come in on­ly when you win.”

Over the past three months, the coun­try’s Un­der-17 boys’ and girls’ teams have failed to qual­i­fy for their re­spec­tive World Cups. And on­ly on Wednes­day, the coun­try’s U-20 fell to a 3-0 loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca, which put them out of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onships that was held in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

T&T’s lone re­main­ing hope rests with the se­nior women’s team, which faces El Sal­vador in a must-win clash at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on April 18 for the right to ad­vance out of Group F of the Qual­i­fiers.