No for­mal con­tract has been signed, but by all in­di­ca­tions, T&T's foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty can look for­ward to the re­turn of World Cup coach Leo Been­hakker for at least a two month pe­ri­od to over­see the So­ca War­riors' par­tic­i­pa­tion at next month's Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Shaun Fuentes, the 70-year-old for­mer Re­al Madrid tac­ti­cian who car­ried this coun­try to its first and on­ly Fi­fa World Cup ap­pear­ance in 2006, is like­ly to re­turn to T&T as ear­ly as Thurs­day, when for­mal arrange­ments on his con­tract will be fi­nalised and signed.

Fuentes said there is on­go­ing di­a­logue on the mat­ter and noth­ing has been put in writ­ing.Giv­en his suc­cess­es which ranges from three La Liga (1987-1989) ti­tles dur­ing his stint as coach of Re­al Madrid, two Dutch Ere­di­visie ti­tles with Ajax (1980 and 1990) and one with Fayeno­ord (1999), as well as car­ry­ing Sau­di Ara­bia to its first World Cup ap­pear­ance in 1994, the coach is ex­pect­ed to spark life in­to the T&T team which has been strug­gling with re­cent re­sults af­ter four loss­es in five match­es, with one draw in be­tween (goal­less away to Be­lize).

Most re­cent­ly the T&T team, mi­nus some key play­ers, no­tably vet­er­an Car­los Ed­wards, Ken­wyne Jones and Khaleem Hy­land, end­ed a tour of Eu­rope with two dis­ap­point­ing loss­es, 4-0 to Ro­ma­nia and 1-0 to Es­to­nia, the lat­ter of which is ranked eight places low­er in the Fi­fa world rank­ings. Been­hakker was present at the Ro­ma­nia fix­ture.Most of the play­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed, how­ev­er, were back in train­ing up to yes­ter­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va. For­eign-based play­ers Dar­ryl Roberts and Car­los Ed­wards are in camp, while sev­er­al oth­ers in­clud­ing Shah­don Win­ches­ter, Radan­fah Abu Bakr and Ataulla Guer­ra, are still with their re­spec­tive clubs.