T&T is waiting with bated breath, for the appointment of a national football coach, following the expiration of the contract of coach Angus Eve.
The FIFA-appointed Normalisation Committee, led by businessman Robert Hadad, is expected to decide on who the coach will be this week after a comprehensive review of the team’s performance and results at the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the CONCACAF Nations League and other matches and Eve will be a part of that process.
On Tuesday, Guardian Media Sports reported that former national coach Stephen Hart has been tipped to replace Eve from sources who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.
However, Hadad, speaking to Guardian Media Sports yesterday said that Hart was one of many coaches that the normalisation committee/T&T Football Association contacted to be part of the coaching set-up.
He revealed that he had also been communicating with Russell Latapy, a former national midfield maestro among others on T&T football matters.
However, Hadad admitted that in the case of both coaches (Hart and Latapy), they had encountered in-court issues which have now been cleared up.
“We have a lot of people we’re talking to, so why they didn’t mention any other names? We’ve been negotiating with Stephen Hart for years. Stephen Hart was owed a ton of money too. We’re talking to Russell Latapy. Russell was owed a ton of money too. I’m not saying either of them is being considered, I’m saying a lot of these people have served their time and have done an amazing job for this country and we treated them like rubbish, we didn’t pay them their money,” Hadad explained.
He noted further, “They had court judgments and they weren’t paid, so we’ve been talking to all of them, so I don’t understand why someone singling out Stephen, I can’t understand that one.”
Quizzed further on whether payments were made to them, he said, “We have negotiated their balances already, so there’s nothing more being owed to them.”
The Courts had ordered the TTFA to pay both coaches over a combined 1.2 million dollars in outstanding salaries owed to them over several years.
Meanwhile, Eve, who took over the coaching reigns from Englishman Terry Fenwick in September 2021, has a record of 12 wins, nine draws, and seven defeats. Fenwick had failed to move T&T past the preliminary rounds of the Caribbean qualifiers to the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The Soca Warriors defeated St Kitts and Nevis 3-0 in their opening match in Group A of the CONCACAF Gold Cup. However, T&T was beaten 4-1 by regional rivals Jamaica and that was followed by a 6-0 rout by the Americans in the final group-stage fixture.
The results have since made Eve, a former national standout, the target of both criticism and sympathy from the football fraternity.
Eve, who has achieved his mandate of qualifying for the Soca Warriors to the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and into the ‘A’ League of the CONCACAF Nations League has also helped T&T moved three places up the FIFA ranking to position 101st.
Hadad explained that “Angus is still the coach, so we cannot start a process for a man who is still there. No decision has been made on what we do with him as yet. We have a group of people we put in place to deal with that, to do an evaluation but it takes time, you don’t do these things in a day.”
SOURCE: T&T Guardian