Keith Look Loy, the chairman of the T&T Football Association (TTFA) Technical Committee, has set out on a football mission that will see the Soca Warriors from the junior levels, women to the senior teams stamp via a brand of football that is visible locally, regionally and internationally and that brand will serve as the teams' identity with immediate effect.
On Friday, Look Loy brought together all the Technical Staffs and technical department to a meeting at the Conference Room at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Balmain, Couva and conducted in-depth discussions on a wide range of topics under the theme 'Who We Are'.
The meeting and topic was in keeping with the new TTFA structure around its Project 2026 strategic plan which the TTFA has outfitted with a staff estimated to be about 35 people.
The meeting was attended by the newly appointed senior men’s team head coach Terry Fenwick, Derek King, who Fenwick's assistant and is also the Under-20 Men’s head coach. Assistants Under-20 coaches Stern John and Angus Eve. Eve is also, the Men's U-17 head coach.
Goalkeeper coaches Ross Russell and Clayton Ince, Boys Under-15 head coach Keith Jeffrey, Women’s Team Under 17 and 20 head coach Richard Hood, Senior men’s team manager Basil Thompson and women's team managers Nadia James and Maylee Attin-Johnson.
National Team Director Richard Piper, Women’s Football director Jinelle James, Michael Williams, who is equipment manager, Norris Ferguson, Club Licensing and Compliance director and Dion La Foucade, the Technical Director of football and a host of other technical staff members.
After the meeting, the former technical director of the TTFA Look Loy said, “Today is a historic day. Never in the history of the TTFF/TTFA has there been a meeting like this where the entire brain trust of the Football Association, all of the technical staffs, not just the coaches, but everyone from physio, trainer, goalkeeper coach to head coach all assembled in one room to talk about the national teams programme and where we want it to go, how do we revive our football fortunes and how do we fly our flag again on the international level and how do we get back to World Cups again. “We started with some administrative housekeeping talking about different policies that we are introducing such as code of conduct, the incident report and insurance and media policies but the heart of the discussion was about what kind of football do we want to play, who is Trinidad and Tobago and what is the Trinidad and Tobago player. We had a very useful discussion about that in front of a full house.”
He continued: “We isolated several principles in the attack, in defence and general principles that we want to see employed by all our teams. The formation is not the issue. But there are general principles we want to see in our football, for example, play from the back, maximum efficiency and quick rotation of the ball in our half, two touch, get it to the sides of the pitch, midfield support, forwards who go in behind the defence or dropping off into a pocket, get it down the sides of the pitch, play the ball in when we lose it go get it back quickly… how we want to organise our play and so on. We are on the same page with that. We expect that all of the teams will begin preparing to play like this with the Senior men’s team being the headship team.”
It is understood that a document will be prepared and used in the TTFA Academy and coaching courses and filtered down into the regional programmes for scouts to now identify players to be taught to implement the preferred type of football.
“It’s a huge exercise to put all the teams and coaches on the same page, respecting the individuality of each coach and each player of course so that when we go out to play be it the under 15s right up to the senior team on both sides of the gender divide, people know this is a Trinidad and Tobago team,” Look Loy said.
He said, “I prefaced everything by making the point that our football is in a crisis. We have fallen away dramatically from where we used to be. We now have to identify who we are, what we want to do, how we intend to solve this issue and get back to where we want to be which as I said is on the top level of Concacaf and the World Cup stage."