Trinidad and Tobago’s senior men’s footballers’ poor performance at the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup is more a symptom of the overall decline of football in T&T and less about national coach Angus Eve.
This is the view of both Brent Sancho and Clayton Morris, two former players who have represented Trinidad and Tobago successfully and at the highest level.
“The formulation of a technical committee should be the first port of call,” stated Sancho, the former UK-based footballer, ex-sport minister and 2006 FIFA World Cup defender.
“The problem is bigger than who coaches the country. It’s a decay,” Sancho emphasised. “I also think we are dealing with a pool of players that have exhausted their lifespan.”
Morris captained the T&T Strike Squad which missed out on a 1990 FIFA World Cup spot by a point, when losing its final match 1-0 to the United States. Under his captaincy, T&T matched the best teams in the confederation, drawing matches against the USA and Costa Rica, as well as beating El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1989 CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers.
“The problem is not the coach. You can bring Jesus Christ to coach the team and there will not be change,” sarcastically stated Morris, who felt the greatest changes must come in the area of administration.
“How long has the Normalisation Committee (NC) been in place and all the sub-committees, like a technical committee, are inactive,” lamented Morris.
“I can’t see the Normalisation Committee taking the responsibility to deal with the technical aspect of our football,” he said, adding: “I think that is what we need to put in place.”
T&T had an opening 3-0 win over Gold Cup debutants St Kitts-Nevis, prior to suffering humiliating defeats to Jamaica (4-1) and the USA (6-0).
“Anybody within the twin-island republic who was expecting different results was naïve,” Sancho declared. ”The decay of Trinidad and Tobago football has been evident for many, many years.
“Obviously the results were unsatisfactory, but I think the horse bolted the stable long time ago,” continued Sancho. “The issue is not so much who is the coach, because we have been through three coaches over the last couple of years, and the performances have been the same.”
And Morris never believed T&T would emerge from Group A, given that he did not think the national team had either the quality or preparation time.
“I was always reserved about us going in there and matching those teams,” he said. “The one team I was sure we would beat is SKN, and they were the whipping boys of the group.”
Morris confessed to seeing only highlights of the first two matches, prior to the Soca Warriors’ heavy defeat to the USA. However, he always felt it unlikely that the Soca Warriors could have matched either Jamaica or the Americans, given what he felt was inadequate preparation.
“I had the opportunity Tuesday night to watch four of the teams in the other group,” he noted, adding: ”When I saw the intensity of the games involving those four teams, I thought that if we are not playing at that level of intensity, I can’t see us going past our group.”
And Sancho was also of the view that the Soca Warriors’ level of play and on-the-field commitment was inferior to the top teams.
“We are just not at a level of a USA or a Jamaica; The problem is that we don’t have players at that level,” Sancho contends. “Jamaica’s front three play in the (English) Premiership and our front three are no where close to that level. Even our defenders are not at that level.”
Morris is also not pleased with the level of commitment of some of the players who now represent T&T.
“I don’t think we have that patriotism with these guys...that they don’t know what it is to represent T&T. I think that is lacking.”
Morris felt youth development was key to instilling in national footballers the total passion and patriotism typical of the Reggae Boyz.
“We can’t wait till they reach big man and when they are representing us,” argued Morris. “They don’t really understand what it is to represent Trinidad and Tobago...and that is clear.”
SOURCE: T&T Express