"Gone are the days when chang­ing a coach is a so­lu­tion to foot­ball is­sues."

For­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er who was a stand­out with the now in­fa­mous 'Strike Squad' of 1989, Bri­an Williams, at­tempt­ed to break down the is­sues that led to the fail­ure of the So­ca War­riors at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.

Fol­low­ing a 3-0 vic­to­ry over St Kitts and Nevis in Group A of the Gold Cup on June 25, T&T, coached by An­gus Eve sur­ren­dered the oth­er two match­es against Ja­maica 4-1 on the June 28, and then against the Unit­ed States 6-0 on Sun­day to send them pack­ing out of the re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

The con­se­quence of this has been calls for Eve to step down as coach, and bring in an­oth­er coach. For­mer coach Stephen Hart, as it is be­ing ru­moured and sug­gest­ed as Eve's re­place­ment.

Williams, who like many, has spent his en­tire life in the sport, tried to ex­plain the for­mu­la for suc­cess in sports and par­tic­u­lar­ly foot­ball. He said it starts with hav­ing the right in­fra­struc­ture and the right ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said he want­ed to stay away from the per­ceived "bac­cha­nal" of giv­ing such com­ments, but it would on­ly con­tin­ue a re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tion that stag­nates progress.

"I was to­tal­ly moved with the se­lec­tion of the team from the St Kitts and Nevis game, and then play­ers' per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is what I looked at. I watched the whole dri­ve by the play­ers, the ba­sic in­tel­li­gence and ba­sic un­der­stand­ing to do well and to play hard for the na­tion­al team and I did not see that. I am not get­ting enough of that and that is an in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a play­er," Williams ex­plained.

In a most can­did re­sponse, Williams added: "So the play­ers we have present­ly, do we say that they are not good enough for in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion at this point in time? It could be so but I can­not re­al­ly an­swer you to say get rid of An­gus and bring in Stephen Hart, be­cause that will be the con­sen­sus. 'Let us change the coach be­cause he failed'. Did he fail? Re­al­ly and tru­ly? Okay, but sta­tis­tics might show you oth­er­wise.

"If the na­tion­al team did not per­form well, ob­vi­ous­ly it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the coach and that is what An­gus has to deal with, and that is what we as spec­ta­tors al­so have to look at be­cause we are look­ing for re­sults.

"If we get bad re­sults then we get down to the nit­ty-grit­ty and find out what caused those bad re­sults, what caused the play­ers to per­form so poor­ly, and then the coach will have to an­swer that with his staff be­cause they are re­spon­si­ble for mo­ti­vat­ing the play­ers."

The ras­ta-haired-style rugged for­mer right-back, in his hey­days, ex­hib­it­ed undy­ing com­mit­ment that made him a pre­ferred choice for coach­es in the de­fence.

His play­ing days lo­cal­ly nev­er ham­pered his pas­sion to wear the red, white, and black for in T&T, but de­spite the suc­cess­es of the Strike Squad in 1989, com­ing with­in a point of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, even then, there was not the ad­min­is­tra­tive per­fec­tion to en­sure the prop­er prepa­ra­tion of teams.

Williams said: "We might bring in Stephen Hart to­mor­row and af­ter two or three games, we might be say­ing it's bet­ter we kept An­gus. It might be so be­cause we don't have the di­vine rights to see these things, but cer­tain in­fra­struc­ture and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, a prop­er­ly run League, en­sur­ing that the play­ers are be­ing com­pen­sat­ed or paid a de­cent salary above the min­i­mum wage, and a man could have a hope that he can re­al­ly give his all to it be­cause to play in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, it is a full-time job."

Williams has been pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ments of re­gion­al teams that ac­count­ed for their suc­cess. As such, he con­clud­ed that maybe mi­nus a cou­ple of play­ers, Eve did se­lect the best pool of play­ers to wear the red, white, and black.

"Putting things in­to per­spec­tive, all those chal­lenges that An­gus faced. Yes he will have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the team per­for­mances and so on, but if you look at the na­tion­al team present­ly, I would say I think An­gus has one of the best pool of play­ers to rep­re­sent the coun­try. So from a pos­i­tive stand­point, I don't think the se­lec­tion of the team was bad be­cause when you look at Ja­maica, their League was func­tion­al and op­er­at­ing, but when the team was se­lect­ed they did not have a play­er from the do­mes­tic league on the team."

He con­tin­ued, "I lis­tened al­so to Guade­loupe, where they say on­ly one play­er who was play­ing lo­cal­ly was on the team, and it goes on and on with most of the teams. We look at the Ja­maican Pre­mier League and we say it is of a re­al­ly good stan­dard, so how come when it was time to play in the Na­tions League the coach didn't even se­lect one play­er from there?"

Williams, who was sol­id de­fend­er point­ed out, "And that was a big is­sue in Ja­maica be­cause they find that he should have at least se­lect­ed one play­er who was play­ing lo­cal­ly."

Last evening, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) sent out a press state­ment ad­vis­ing that it has made no de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the com­po­si­tion of the na­tion­al se­nior men’s team’s tech­ni­cal staff.

It said: "Re­ports on the ap­point­ment of a new coach are pure­ly spec­u­la­tive and with­out foun­da­tion.

"The TTFA is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the team’s per­for­mance and its re­cent re­sults. The head coach, An­gus Eve, is an in­te­gral part of the dis­cus­sions, as his feed­back is a crit­i­cal part of the process.

"Fu­ture plans will be de­ter­mined fol­low­ing the re­view, and the TTFA will make an of­fi­cial state­ment at the ap­pro­pri­ate time."