Italian Carolina Morace, the country’s new women’s coach said she intends to take T&T football to the next level.
Soon after her arrival at the VIP Lounge of the Piarco International Airport yesterday afternoon, Morace told the Guardian Media that she was totally impressed with what she saw from the T&T team when she coached the Canadian team against them back in 2010, saying, “Before Canada played T&T, I thought they would have been an easy team, but instead they turned out to be much harder than I expected.”
Morace, 52, who is here on a two and a half-year contract as coach and technical director also came with her assistant coach Nicola Williams, who will be the country’s Under-20 coach.
Morace, a native of Venice, said she was honoured to be coaching T&T, as she loves to coach women’s football but called for the support of the football public and the T&T Football Association, which she had already received from its president David John-Williams.
The local football boss told a media gathering at the unveiling of Belgian Tom Saintfiet as the new men’s football coach in December, that he was honoured to have Morace as coach of the team, noting she was among the top five women coaches in the world. She coached the Canadian and Italian national teams and club sides Lazio and Viterbese men’s club side.
The former striker who played for 10 different teams in Italy, said she will first have a look at the players, the seniors, under-20s and under-17s to see the level of skill and fitness before she selects a core of 25-26 to work with for each team.
“The first thing is to create athletes and then I will focus on the league” Morace said. In addition to being coach and technical director, the Italian is the holder of a UEFA PRO License and is best known for being the first woman to coach a professional men’s football team, Viterbese of Italian in the Serie C1, will also be responsible for coaches’ education and development in the women programme. She will also conduct grassroots programmes.
Morace, who represented Italy 153 times and scored 105 goals, (from 1978 - 1997) made it clear via skype just over a month ago, that she wants to win, but noted she cannot achieve this if the players are not committed.
Video - Morace arrives to begin duties as Women's Head Coach