BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Bar­ba­dos Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion­hired leg­endary Trinidad and To­ba­go mid­field­er, Rus­sell Lat­apy, as head coach of the se­nior men’s na­tion­al team on a two-year con­tract.

The 50-year-old Lat­apy, a pre­vi­ous T&T head coach who has al­so had spells as as­sis­tant coach at Boav­ista in Por­tu­gal and In­ver­ness Cale­don­ian in Scot­land, will over­see his first match in charge when Bar­ba­dos hosts Nicaragua in a cru­cial CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League qual­i­fi­er here Sun­day.

“Mr Lat­apy and I have been talk­ing for the past two years about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of him work­ing in Bar­ba­dos,” Bar­ba­dos Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Randy Har­ris, told a me­dia con­fer­ence.

“It is not just a sit­u­a­tion of Rus­sell look­ing for a job; he has been very in­ter­est­ed in our team and its de­vel­op­ment. He is hap­py with the tal­ent that we have in Bar­ba­dos, and he be­lieves that he can take it to the next lev­el.

“I think that he has con­vinced me ear­ly a clock that he would play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the suc­cess­es of Bar­ba­dos’ team now and in the fu­ture.”

Lat­apy was a mem­ber of the fa­mous Strike Squad which nar­row­ly missed out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 1990 World Cup but was part of the his­toric side which qual­i­fied for the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many.

Fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment, he was ap­point­ed T&T head coach in 2009, suc­ceed­ing Colom­bian Fran­cis­co Mat­u­rana.

Lat­apy al­so boasts a glit­ter­ing club ca­reer, win­ning league ti­tles with top Por­tugese side FC Por­to be­fore al­so turn­ing out for Boav­ista.

In Scot­land, he played for top sides Rangers and Hi­bern­ian, along with Dundee and Falkirk, be­fore wind­ing down his club ca­reer.

Lat­apy said he was look­ing for­ward to im­part­ing his ex­ten­sive knowl­edge to the Bar­ba­di­an play­ers.

“I have spo­ken to the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor watch­ing the game they played a few weeks ago, and I am hap­py to say that we have a bunch of play­ers who are tal­ent­ed and not on­ly tal­ent­ed, but they are pre­pared to work very hard,” Lat­apy said.

“And I think for any coach if you have a team that is will­ing to work hard then that is half of the bat­tle done.”

He con­tin­ued: “I would do my best to im­prove the lev­el of the team and what­ev­er I can do to as­sist in the im­prove­ment of Bar­ba­dos’ foot­ball, and that would im­prove foot­ball in the re­gion in gen­er­al.

“That is one of our main goals to help im­prove foot­ball in this re­gion which gives the young play­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty not on­ly to play pro­fes­sion­al­ly but to im­prove their stan­dard of life, be­cause this is what foot­ball has done for me and I would like to pass on some of this ex­pe­ri­ence and give some of the younger play­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do the same.”

Lat­apy re­places Ahmed Mo­hammed who will now over­see the FA’s youth pro­grammes.

(CMC)