An over­all col­lec­tive ef­fort is be­ing called for, to add to the wel­come re-ap­point­ment of An­gus Eve as the coun­try’s na­tion­al foot­ball coach, by de­fend­er Radan­fah Abu Bakr.

Eve’s short-term con­tract end­ed on Au­gust 31 and it opened the door for the ap­point­ment of a new coach for the se­nior na­tion­al team which Eve took to the group phase of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States in Ju­ly/Au­gust.

Eve’s hero­ics came af­ter the team was dumped out of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers un­der coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, de­spite be­ing placed in a group that they were ex­pect­ed to emerge from, con­sid­er­ing the oth­er teams be­ing St Kitts and Nevis, Ba­hamas, Guyana and Puer­to Ri­co.

The FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) took the lib­er­ty to re­turn the for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er for a sec­ond time, de­spite the in­ter­ests of oth­er coach­es which were made pub­lic.

This time, how­ev­er, the ac­tion of the com­mit­tee was met with a nod of ap­proval from de­fend­ers Abu Bakr and Alvin Jones.

Abu Bakr, who last played for Churchill Broth­ers in the In­di­an Pre­mier League said: “Con­grat­u­la­tions to him, I think he has done well in the very lim­it­ed time he has been there, con­sid­er­ing the lim­it­ed prepa­ra­tion, all the chal­lenges sur­round­ing the TTFA’s Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and our foot­ball in gen­er­al, he’s done well in those cir­cum­stances and cer­tain­ly de­serves an ex­ten­sion to show what he can bring to T&T foot­ball in this new ca­pac­i­ty.

“It will be a big test for him. At this lev­el, he is still tech­ni­cal­ly a rook­ie coach. He hasn’t had a se­nior-team po­si­tion be­fore this, so he’s go­ing to have to learn along the way and learn quick­ly be­cause at this lev­el, a lot of things come at you re­al­ly quick­ly and you have to adapt.

“All the chal­lenges, as I said be­fore, sur­round­ing the TTFA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, our foot­ball in gen­er­al. The pan­dem­ic has made it very dif­fi­cult for every­one in­clud­ing our­selves and our foot­ball and every­thing, so it’s go­ing to be tough, but if he gets the sup­port from the stake­hold­ers around the foot­ball, I think, with his am­bi­tion, he can do very well.”

Eve took the T&T team a 6-1 tri­umph over Montser­rat as well as an 8-7 penal­ty shoot-out win over French Guiana fol­low­ing a 1-1 tie, both in the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup Qual­i­fiers. In the group stage of the Gold Cup, he guid­ed the team to a goal­less tie with Mex­i­co; a 1-1 draw with Guatemala and a 2-0 loss to El Sal­vador.

Ac­cord­ing to Abu Bakr, the sup­port of cor­po­rate T&T will al­so be cru­cial to T&T’s progress in foot­ball un­der Eve, say­ing: “That’s key. When we go to com­pe­ti­tions, for ex­am­ple, the Gold Cup, and see the re­sources that are at the dis­pos­al of the oth­er teams, or when you go to com­pe­ti­tions and see some of the things that they af­ford you, gen­er­al­ly when we train at home or go to friend­lies, we don’t have those kinds of fa­cil­i­ties, and it’s re­al­ly help­ful to have those things such as equip­ment and dif­fer­ent types of tech­nol­o­gy that you can im­ple­ment in the game that can be re­al­ly help­ful.

“But on top of that, we need the sup­port from our fans and the cor­po­rate spon­sors and every­thing to sort of gal­vanise the ef­forts that we put out on the pitch. It re­al­ly has to be a col­lec­tive ef­fort, An­gus Eve is not go­ing to save T&T foot­ball, it’s go­ing to have to come from every­one.”

Mean­while, Jones told Guardian Me­dia Sports that Eve brings much-need­ed con­fi­dence for play­ers, hav­ing al­so played for the coun­try.

“For me, it was no sur­prise. We saw it at the Gold Cup, he was with us for a short pe­ri­od of time and we saw what he can do. We saw the ef­fect he came with, he and his staff. I have full con­fi­dence in An­gus that he will take us to the next lev­el,” said Jones.

“Just his pres­ence, you know he be­lieves in each and every one. He made us be­lieve that we can do all things. He has giv­en us that ex­tra dri­ve that we need on the pitch to rep­re­sent our coun­try.

“It’s a huge task ahead. It’s not just about An­gus and his task, but each and every play­er should look at them­selves and know that we want to take T&T foot­ball to that next lev­el. Each play­er, from el­dest to youngest, should en­sure that they are healthy. It’s not just what the coach does, but the play­ers have to take some cred­it and some blame to en­sure that we’re healthy and we can give An­gus some headache.”