Turkey-based T&T senior women’s football team striker Kennya ‘Yaya’ Cordner has blanked an invitation from newly appointed T&T senior women’s coach Richard Hood to return to the national team.
Earlier this month Hood had extended the invite to T&T’s all-time leading women’s goalscorer, Cordner of Fenerbache as he look to prepare his team for the upcoming Concacaf 2023 Women’s Gold Cup League A Group A qualifier in September against Mexico.
Contacted for comment, Hood stated that he had opened the door to all recent players of the national team as well as members of the Under-17 and Under-20 set-up ahead of the start of screening sessions for the qualifiers which will serve as the qualifying tournament for the 2024 Women’s Gold Cup and will feature 35 Concacaf Member Associations participating, excluding the two who will compete in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games Tournament (USA and Canada or Jamaica) during the FIFA Women’s International Match Windows of September, October, November and December 2023.
The former Police FC coach added that he had also spoken to the 34-year-old Cordner who is coming off her second season with Turkish Women’s Super League runners-up Fenerbache Petrol Ofisi.
However, reached for an update, Hood said Cordner has decided against making a return to the team and he has respected her decision.
He added, “Basically, her reasoning was that she was in the process of changing clubs, and she has decided to focus on her club career at this point.”
In early June, Cordner and Fenerbache Petrol Ofisi suffered a heart-breaking 4-2 extra-time defeat in the Turkish Women’s Super-Football League after a 1-1 draw with Ankara Fomget.
Last year in her debut season with the club, Cordner was the league’s top scorer with 34 goals as her team reached as far as the semifinals, but this season her hopes of repeating that target have been hampered by injuries and she has only netted nine goals.
The Tobago-born Cordner played the last of her 44 matches for the Women Warriors on November 30, 2021, the second of a two-match series away to the Dominican Republic, which ended 1-1 after the first match ended 2-1 in the host's favour four days earlier.
However, She then declined national team selection for the opening rounds of the Concacaf Women’s World Cup Group A qualifiers against Nicaragua, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Turks and Caicos, and Guyana from February to April 2022, as well as the Concacaf W Championship in Mexico where T&T had a dismal showing, losing all three matches in Pool B, against Canada (6-0), Costa Rica (4-0) and Panama (1-0) to miss out on qualifi8cation to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup which begins in Australia and New Zealand, next week.
Back then, the reason for the omission of Cordner, who made her national senior team debut in 2006 as stated by then coach Kenwyne Jones was her own decision, in support of former captain, Maylee Attin-Johnson, who was omitted from the team by Jones ahead of the Concacaf qualifiers as well.
With regards to the team’s preparations to date, Hood stated that training has begun locally as they get ready for the qualifying matches which will start away to Mexico on September 26, before hosting the same team on October 27, followed by matches away to Puerto Rico on December 1, and then at home on December 5.
The T&T coach said, “We began training at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva on Friday last, but the response from the players so far in terms of numbers hasn’t been great.
“However, this week we anticipate that those numbers will improve as a number of players stated that they had some personal matters to sort out.
“We have set about Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and both days on the weekends for training so far, and it is hoped by the end of this week we will have a full group in training.”
So far, Hood has also selected former national women’s team player, Dernelle Mascall, who recently served as coach of the national Under-20 women’s team at the Concacaf Under-20 Championships in Curacao last April as his assistant coach, with Glennon Foncette, the father of national goalkeeper Adrian Foncette, as the goalkeeper coach, with former national hockey player and national women’s team coach Anthony Marcano, as the strength and conditioning trainer.
The T&T coach said he is expected to complete the selection of his technical staff by the end of the week.
For the Concacaf Women’s Gold Cup qualifiers, the 35 nations were split into three leagues according to their CONCACAF women’s ranking as of March 2023 and sub-divided into groups.
Group B will see Canada or Jamaica face off with Panama and Guatemala while Group C will comprise Costa Rica, Haiti, and St Kitts/Nevis.
At the end of the home-and-away round-robin phase, the top teams in the three League A groups will qualify for the 2024 Women’s Gold Cup Group Stage while the runners-up in each group and the first-place teams in each of the three League B groups will advance to the 2024 Women’s Gold Cup preliminaries.
The three League B groups which comprise the next 12 best-ranked CONCACAF teams are as follows - Group A: Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Suriname, and Dominica; Group B: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Martinique, and Group C: Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados.
Hood, previously served as the head coach of the national women’s team in 2011 for both the Pan American Games and Caribbean Football Union Women’s Olympic qualifiers and then in 2016 for the CONCACAF Final Round of Olympic Qualifying competition.
He also led the national Under-20 women’s team to the quarterfinal round of the 2020 CONCACAF Championships and also coached the Under-15 girls’ team, as well as served as an assistant to Norwegian Even Pellerud at the 2010 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup on home soil.