Ter­ry Fen­wick has been cho­sen as the new coach of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s se­nior men’s foot­ball team.

Fen­wick has over 25 years man­age­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence, al­most half of which has been ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in T&T be­tween his first stint with San Juan Jabloteh in 2005 and his fi­nal lo­cal head-coach­ing job in 2014 with Cen­tral FC. He most re­cent­ly was con­sid­ered for the So­ca War­riors job in 2017 as a re­place­ment for for­mer coach Stephen Hart. Den­nis Lawrence, who Fen­wick now re­places, was cho­sen in­stead and last­ed rough­ly two years in charge of the se­nior team.

Up­on an­nounc­ing Fen­wick’s ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, the TTFA said his first ma­jor task will be to guide T&T through the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup 2021 play­off against ei­ther Bar­ba­dos or Guyana in June of next year.

TTFA Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee chair­man Kei­th Look Loy told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “It may be a gam­ble in prin­ci­ple be­cause no coach is go­ing to be guar­an­teed suc­cess. You have to work hard to achieve it but we think that we have found the right per­son in the cir­cum­stance to lead the team for­ward and to help turn the ship around.”

Fen­wick emerged as the best op­tion out of four can­di­dates for the job and has been giv­en a two-year con­tract, ef­fec­tive from Jan­u­ary 1, 2020, which could be ex­tend­ed to four years should he take T&T to the 2021 Gold Cup and reach as far as the quar­ter­fi­nal stage of the tour­na­ment.

The 60-year-old for­mer Eng­land de­fend­er, who played for the Three Li­ons 20 times in­clud­ing at the 1986 World Cup in Mex­i­co, is re­port­ed­ly set to earn a base salary of US$17,500 per month, ex­clu­sive of a num­ber of per­for­mance-re­lat­ed bonus­es. Should he earn T&T qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 2021 Gold Cup, his base salary could in­crease to US$20,000, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably told.

With the TTFA cur­rent­ly mired in debt, Look Loy cleared up any con­fu­sion about how Fen­wick’s de­mands would be met over the course of his con­tract.

“We have signed and agreed com­mit­ments for mon­ey start­ing in Jan­u­ary. We al­so have monies that every na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion is en­ti­tled to in cal­en­dar year 2020. That amounts to about $8 mil­lion by my cal­cu­la­tion,” Look Loy said.

“What we have to do—we have debt—but we al­so have to man­age the debt and man­age the in­come prop­er­ly, be­cause we will have in­come.

“If the na­tion­al team does well, the feel-good fac­tor steps in and peo­ple want to as­so­ciate with it, in­clud­ing cor­po­rate peo­ple and spon­sors. A win­ning team is go­ing to bring spon­sors. A los­ing team is go­ing to chase spon­sors.”

It is be­lieved that Fen­wick’s per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy in T&T and im­me­di­ate avail­abil­i­ty set him apart from some high­ly in­ter­est­ed in­di­vid­u­als, which in­clud­ed Fen­wick’s fel­low for­mer Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al, 62-year old Pe­ter Tay­lor, 42-year old Scot­tish man­ag­er Si­mon Mcmen­e­my and Stephen Con­stan­tine, a 57-year-old Eng­lish­man who pre­vi­ous­ly man­aged coun­tries such as In­dia, Nepal, Malawi, Su­dan and Rwan­da at se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

Tay­lor was re­port­ed­ly the oth­er lead­ing can­di­date and car­ries the most im­pres­sive CV of all the can­di­dates. Apart from a 20-year play­ing ca­reer which in­clud­ed stints at rep­utable Lon­don clubs Crys­tal Palace and Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur, Tay­lor has man­aged the Eng­land Un­der 21s twice (1996-99 and 2004-2007). He has al­so served as Eng­land care­tak­er man­ag­er in 2000, al­beit for one match, a 1-0 de­feat to Italy and has al­so tak­en charge of 21 teams in a man­age­r­i­al ca­reer that dates back to 1986. He is the cur­rent man­ag­er of Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge​​​​​​​ in the Na­tion­al League, the fifth tier of the Eng­lish Foot­ball League sys­tem. Had he been suc­cess­ful­ly cho­sen, Tay­lor had re­quest­ed to be al­lowed to pick up the man­tle in June 2020, a re­quest which Look Loy and his com­mit­tee could not ac­cede to.

“He was very in­ter­est­ed but is con­tract­ed to a team un­til June. We com­pete for a place in the Gold Cup in June, we can­not wait on you,” Look Loy sur­mised.

It is un­der­stood that Fen­wick’s sup­port staff will al­so be de­ployed with oth­er T&T youth teams as a cost-cut­ting mea­sure by the TTFA.