In the wake of the disastrous World Cup Qualifying campaign that led to the subsequent parting of ways between T&T senior men's football team coach Dwight Yorke and the T&T Football Association (TTFA), former T&T head coach Angus Eve says there may have been unrealistic expectations placed on Yorke and T&T's World Cup objectives.
Eve admitted to agreeing that the country had a good chance to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States of America, Canada, and Mexico due to the automatic qualification of the three co-hosts. He believes that the group featuring Bermuda, Curacao, and Jamaica was one from which the Soca Warriors could have progressed.
T&T finished third in the group behind the eventual winners, Curacao, which earned automatic qualification. Second-placed Jamaica is scheduled to face an inter-confederation play-off.
With that outcome, Eve told Guardian Media Sport on Tuesday, “There are a lot of unrealistic people who live in this country in football. World Cups have been happening since 1930. We have only qualified for one. I think there's a false sense of entitlement that we belong in this competition, where we're not developing the players that we used to be developing back in the day.”
The former head coach added, "Yes, I think that we had a really good opportunity, (but) at the end of the day, there is a lot of work to be done."
Eve was somewhat forgiving of his former national teammate, Yorke and suggested that the former Manchester United striker's fortunes in the T&T hot seat might have been doomed from the start.
"You can't just look at a coach at the national level and say he failed. There are a number of reasons why," he said.
"It starts with the government and the level of involvement. When the team comes in, everybody wants to jump up and go to the airport, but what is being done at the other levels? I coached at a primary school the other day, giving back to my primary school. They don't even mark the fields. I remember when we played in primary school, you had good fields, and then you graduated into a grassroots team.”
The man now in charge of T&T Premier Football League (TTPFL) team Club Sando, as well as reigning Secondary Schools' Football League (SSFL) Boys' Premiership champions Napararima College, took a philosophical look at Yorke's ouster.
According to Eve, “The job that we do as coaches is a professional job. All over the world, coaches lose their jobs. Sometimes they end up back on the same team that they were fired from. I myself was removed from the T&T job. The TTFA probably felt that I did as much as I could have done for the team at the time, so they moved on from me. That's just part of the job. Dwight is a big guy; he's been playing professional football all his life. He's now in management, so he would understand that jobs don't normally last forever. You're in for a while, and when the owners or the chairmen or the presidents, in this case, feel that you can't do any more for the team, they get somebody who they feel can.”
Under Eve, the T&T senior football team played 23 internationals and enjoyed 11 wins, five draws and seven losses. T&T scored 45 goals and conceded 36.
Meanwhile, Derek King, who was assistant coach under Eve and replaced him as the interim coach when Eve was sacked in July 2024 before Yorke's arrival, has once more earned the call as interim coach. King's first assignment will be an international friendly against Bolivia on Sunday, and then the FIFA Series from March 28 to 30, where T&T will face Venezuela and Gabon in Uzbekistan.
