Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve, will ei­ther be re­ward­ed for his work with the se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball team at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and its qual­i­fiers, or he will be de­nied an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue coach­ing the team on a long-term ba­sis.

This will be de­cid­ed in Sep­tem­ber when a new coach is ap­point­ed by the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, be­ing led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad.

The TTFA has tar­get­ed Au­gust to in­vite mem­bers of the pub­lic to ap­ply for the head coach po­si­tion, and Eve, who led the coun­try to wins against Montser­rat and French Guiana in the Gold Cup Qual­i­fiers, as well as two drawn match­es to Mex­i­co and Guatemala, and a loss to El Sal­vador in the group phase of the Gold Cup Tour­na­ment, is said to be the front run­ner for the job.

Jef­fer­son George, in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that Eve has ex­ceed­ed all ex­pec­ta­tions in charge of the T&T team at the Gold Cup which should au­to­mat­i­cal­ly earn him the right to the T&T coach­ing job for the next few years.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er coach, Shawn Coop­er, a for­mer na­tion­al youth coach be­lieves Eve should not be judged or giv­en the coach­ing job from his per­for­mance at the Gold Cup alone since it was not a show of his true po­ten­tial.

Mean­while, Coop­er said: "He was giv­en the man­date to get the team in­to the Gold Cup and he did so, which we weren't sure if we would have got­ten un­der the for­mer coach. So, in do­ing so, he did what he was asked to do.

Now, go­ing in­to the Gold Cup, it's an­oth­er com­pe­ti­tion where prepa­ra­tion would have been key, in terms of us pro­gress­ing in­to the sec­ond round. So in a kind of way, it is un­fair to judge him with a big stick.

It's an in­ter­im job and the time was not al­lot­ted to him to re­al­ly do what he want­ed to do. As Trinida­di­ans, the ex­pec­ta­tion was up, see­ing that he qual­i­fied for the Gold Cup, so every­one is ex­pect­ing us now to go to the sec­ond round, but to go to that round it would mean that your prepa­ra­tion would have been one where you would have had a cou­ple of months to work with the play­ers and have them buy in­to what you want them to do. So all in all, he should be giv­en a pass be­cause that was a very dif­fi­cult task."

Eve took over the coach­ing job from Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick who was sacked in June af­ter fail­ing to ad­vance past the first round of the FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers. Un­der Fen­wick, the team re­ceived wins against Guyana 3-0 and St Kitts & Nevis 2-0 but drew with Puer­to Ri­co 1-1 and the Ba­hamas 0-0 in Group F.

Ac­cord­ing to Coop­er: "I think judg­ing him go­ing for­ward, we should look at what we have in front of us, in terms of the oth­er can­di­dates. If we had the oth­er can­di­dates then you can make a judge­ment and say what their body of work was/is in re­la­tion to An­gus'.

Mean­while, George la­bels Eve as the over­whelm­ing choice, not­ing al­so that it would make per­fect sense to pick some­one for the job who is aware of the play­ers.

"I don't think that An­gus made, not just a strong case for him­self, but al­so for oth­er lo­cal coach­es. I thought he per­formed cred­itably and in some cas­es, ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions, so def­i­nite­ly he de­serves a go at the job.

I think it would make sense to ap­ply some­one to the job who has a very good work­ing knowl­edge of the play­ers, our en­vi­ron­ment, the lim­i­ta­tions and our cul­tur­al unique­ness. And I think An­gus sep­a­rat­ed him­self well, and would have put him­self ahead of what­ev­er short­list they might be prepar­ing at the mo­ment."