Pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Kieron Ed­wards, says head coach Dwight Yorke still has the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s full sup­port de­spite the na­tion­al side’s slow start to their fi­nal phase of World Cup Qual­i­fiers.

Com­pet­ing in Group B, T&T have gained just one point from their open­ing two match­es, af­ter draw­ing with Cu­ra­cao and los­ing to Ja­maica and cur­rent­ly sit in third po­si­tion.

On­ly the top two teams will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy for the 2026 World Cup to be held in the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

Yorke was hired by the TTFA in No­vem­ber 2024 and giv­en a strict man­date to lead the team to the 2026 World Cup.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on i95.5 FM’s 6 to 26 World Cup pod­cast, Ed­wards ad­mit­ted he had hoped for a bet­ter start for the na­tion­al team.

“I’m a bit dis­ap­point­ed from the first two games. I think every Trin­bag­on­ian is a bit dis­ap­point­ed from the first two games; we were ex­pect­ing more.

“I think we played well enough to de­serve more from the games, but foot­ball is that type of sport and un­less you put the ball be­hind the net and win those games and see out 90 plus min­utes in a game, you have to un­der­stand and ac­cept those re­al­i­ties,” Ed­wards said.

“But we are look­ing for­ward to the next win­dow and the next win­dow is a very cru­cial one for us. We knew go­ing in­to the first win­dow that we couldn’t qual­i­fy for the World Cup out of the first win­dow. Even hav­ing a good first win­dow, we knew this sec­ond win­dow is the re­al one in terms of set­ting up to get to that last win­dow in No­vem­ber to qual­i­fy and the jour­ney is still there.”

Ed­wards said, de­spite the shaky start and some calls for Yorke to step down as head coach, he still had full con­fi­dence in him to car­ry Trinidad and To­ba­go to their sec­ond-ever World Cup.

“We are be­hind Dwight 100 per cent and I be­lieve he has most of Trin­ba­go’s sup­port, as well as the head coach.

“Per­sons would have seen in both games that we would have scored three off­side goals in Ja­maica, the first one is just in terms of lean­ing for­ward and a hair­line frac­ture. It was the first time us­ing VAR in qual­i­fy­ing as well and it was to our detri­ment for three goals,” Ed­wards said.

“But we move for­ward and coach Yorke, I tru­ly be­lieve that he has the plan and the vi­sion in terms of what he wants to do. He’s clear about it and with the ad­di­tion­al sup­port with the third-gen­er­a­tion Grand­par­ent law, it does widen the pool.”

CMC