New Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Devin El­cock is em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead T&T foot­ball from a po­si­tion of de­vel­op­ment.

El­cock, the hold­er of the Con­ca­caf D, C, B, and Ad­vanced li­cences, earned the pick from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to be the re­place­ment for An­ton Corneal, the man he worked with as an un­der­study for many years, but he not­ed that he knew the time would come when he would have to step up.

El­cock’s ap­point­ment as tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor comes at an op­por­tune time, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the re­cent FI­FA World Cup pro­gramme about to press the re­set but­ton and the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion fo­cused on turn­ing things around in the ar­eas of youth and women’s foot­ball at both the club and na­tion­al lev­els.

El­cock will meet with both the pres­i­dent of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, Ed­wards, and its gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Ka­reem Paul on Tues­day to chart the way for­ward. “Well, I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty. You know, I have been go­ing through the ranks un­der the pre­vi­ous tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, An­ton Corneal, who was re­al­ly a men­tor to me. So, I’m just wait­ing to have the con­ver­sa­tion with the Pres­i­dent and the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary and en­gage the na­tion­al coach­es who are in prepa­ra­tion for tour­na­ments right now, and then chart a course for­ward,” El­cock, the younger broth­er of for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er An­cil El­cock, said yes­ter­day.

“I will lis­ten to the pres­i­dent’s views, al­so the gen­er­al sec­re­tary’s, and then share my views and see how best we can im­ple­ment a strate­gic plan in terms of go­ing for­ward for the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball in the coun­try. Notwith­stand­ing the pre­vi­ous tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, I will see some of the work­ing frame­work that he left be­hind and see what I can do for con­ti­nu­ity in one part and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new ideas in terms of go­ing for­ward.”

“I em­brace change. I un­der­stand that you have to start some­where. I un­der­stand that dur­ing the pe­ri­od of time that I was go­ing through my de­vel­op­men­tal phase, one day I’ll have to take up the role of a se­nior po­si­tion. I know with my con­tacts and the peo­ple that I fre­quent­ly have con­ver­sa­tions with in terms of the foot­ball op­por­tu­ni­ty that it shouldn’t be a chal­lenge in terms of go­ing for­ward. But, you know, grad­u­al­ly, we ex­pect to change things and have a bet­ter group of play­ers com­ing for­ward, es­pe­cial­ly from the grass­roots lev­el, that could be in­sert­ed in­to the na­tion­al youth teams and prob­a­bly get back to that sta­tus where we have promi­nent na­tion­al play­ers play­ing in ex­ter­nal leagues, es­pe­cial­ly in Eu­rope, like the Levi Gar­cias and so forth,” El­cock as­sured.

El­cock was a mem­ber of the De­fence Force coach­ing staff re­cent­ly but told Guardian Me­dia Sports that, hav­ing gar­nered the tac­ti­cal part of the sport un­der his grasp, he want­ed to get the ad­min­is­tra­tive part as well. It was the ba­sis for El­cock to suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sue a post­grad­u­ate de­gree in sports man­age­ment. “I want­ed to mix and merge both of them to­geth­er, un­der­stand­ing what is re­quired in terms of ad­min­is­tra­tion for a pro­gres­sive en­vi­ron­ment and know­ing the ground lev­el in terms of the coach­ing and the de­vel­op­ment as­pect of it.”

“I think I un­der­stand the role and func­tion. I un­der­stand the peo­ple who paved the way and the coach­es in the coun­try and the ex­ter­nal coach­es who reached out to me be­tween yes­ter­day and to­day. So, in terms of cre­at­ing a plan, a strate­gic plan in terms of go­ing for­ward, I’m not pres­sured in any way be­cause, you know, I’m go­ing to lis­ten to the views of peo­ple who want to give their in­put and analyse their views along with TTFA’s di­rec­tion and see how best we can for­mu­late the best plan for the coun­try’s in­ter­est,” El­cock con­clud­ed.