Stern John, the for­mer T&T pro­lif­ic goalscor­er and cur­rent Se­nior Men’s Team as­sis­tant coach has been named head coach of the Un­der- 17 men’s team.

John’s ap­point­ment was ap­proved by the Board of the TTFA on Mon­day and his as­sign­ment be­gins im­me­di­ate­ly as he moves in to pre­pare the T&T team for the CON­CA­CAF Un­der-17 Men’s Cham­pi­onship in May, which al­so serves as the CON­CA­CAF qual­i­fiers for the 2019 FI­FA Un­der-17 Men’s World Cup in Pe­ru.

T&T faces Bermu­da in its open­ing game on May 1 at the IMG Acad­e­my in Braden­ton, Flori­da, USA to be fol­lowed by clash­es with Ja­maica (May 3) and Mex­i­co on May 5.

In a re­ac­tion to his first na­tion­al team head coach ap­point­ment, the for­mer Birm­ing­ham City for­ward said he ea­ger­ly awaits the com­mence­ment of his du­ties as he seeks to lead T&T in­to the knock­out phase and sub­se­quent­ly Pe­ru 2019.

“It’s a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty for me and I’m ex­cit­ed about the chal­lenge. It’s not an easy chal­lenge but I’m ex­cit­ed and I’m rel­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the young­sters,” John said yes­ter­day.

Lead­ing the na­tion­al team for the first time is an ho­n­our for the ex-Sun­der­land and Southamp­ton marks­man, who has al­so led Cen­tral FC as head coach in the T&T Pro League and CON­CA­CAF com­pe­ti­tions.

“I’ve been work­ing with the T&T men’s team for a cou­ple years and al­so with Cen­tral FC, so I have a lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence un­der my belt. Hope­ful­ly, I can con­tin­ue with my ex­pe­ri­ence and bring some­thing to the youth team. It’s def­i­nite­ly an ex­cit­ing pe­ri­od to be serv­ing as head coach of a na­tion­al team for my coun­try. I’ve played at every lev­el and now get­ting a chance to lead from the front and to work with up­com­ing play­ers is a big deal for me. I’d like to thank the heads at the TTFA for giv­ing me this op­por­tu­ni­ty to make an­oth­er con­tri­bu­tion."

The ex-Colum­bus Crew play­er says he has al­ready as­sessed the op­po­nents that T&T will face in the group in May.

“I think from watch­ing the teams we will play against, I think we have a great op­por­tu­ni­ty. Three teams will come out of the group and the main thing in these com­pe­ti­tions is to try and win your first game. It’s not go­ing to be an easy chal­lenge, but I think we have the qual­i­ty in the play­ers in T&T. We have a good bunch of young play­ers who played un­der Rus­sell Lat­apy be­fore, and I think I just have to con­tin­ue on what he has done be­fore and keep build­ing and work­ing with the team,” John said.