Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elim­i­na­tion from Con­ca­caf’s World Cup 2026 qual­i­fi­ca­tion on Thurs­day evening at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, has start­ed the clock on the next qua­dren­ni­al cy­cle.

​In the year-plus since tak­ing the most im­por­tant foot­ball job in the coun­try, head coach Dwight Yorke led the na­tion­al se­nior men’s team to four wins, six draws, and six de­feats, scor­ing 23 goals and con­ced­ing 25.

​In the fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, his main pri­or­i­ty, Yorke man­aged one win, three draws, and a de­feat. Thurs­day’s 1-1 draw with Ja­maica means T&T will fin­ish the fi­nal round third in Group B.

​Even be­fore the match, this coun­try’s foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty spec­u­lat­ed about Yorke’s fu­ture. In the week pre­ced­ing, T&T’s lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al goal-scor­er, Stern John, made his feel­ings clear dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view.

“Of course, they should [ask him to stay on] be­cause we need sta­bil­i­ty,” the St Lu­cia head coach opined “We can’t just keep chang­ing coach­es every cou­ple of months and sack­ing coach­es. We need some kind of struc­ture in our foot­ball again.”

​It’s a com­mon thread among the mem­bers of yet an­oth­er Gold­en Gen­er­a­tion pro­duced by a coun­try renowned for punch­ing up in all fields of en­deav­our.

Ken­wyne Jones, sev­enth on the all-time scor­ers list with 23 from 91 se­nior caps dur­ing a ca­reer which spanned 14 years, was one of the youngest mem­bers of the squad which earned T&T its first World Cup point and re­mained in step with John.

“I’m dis­ap­point­ed that ob­vi­ous­ly we didn't get through,” the Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) head coach said un­der the clock tow­er the day af­ter, “But I'm quite hap­py with the progress I'm see­ing with the team, the things that are com­ing to­geth­er, you know. I think they def­i­nite­ly need to get some more time and prob­a­bly use the next Na­tions League cy­cle and the World Cup cy­cle to come as a gauge for the con­tin­ued progress.

“I think it's im­por­tant that not on­ly the team, but the whole man­age­ment kind of stick to­geth­er and build for fu­ture days. We tend to go down the route of restart­ing every sin­gle time we have a tour­na­ment, no mat­ter what the age group is.

“Most coach­es get a World Cup cy­cle,” Jones con­tin­ued. “And in that World Cup cy­cle, you're look­ing at some­thing like four years, un­for­tu­nate­ly, he came in at the year to go but the team has still made sig­nif­i­cant progress on the field, off the field."

In al­most all mat­ters of na­tion­al im­port, con­ti­nu­ity con­tin­ues to be a sore point among sober-mind­ed ob­servers; foot­ball is no dif­fer­ent.

​The de­ba­cle of the 1974 cam­paign—two points short af­ter scor­ing five goals but los­ing 2-1 against Haiti on De­cem­ber 4, 1973 and the shock to the sys­tem that was the No­vem­ber 19, 1989, 1-0 de­feat to the Unit­ed States at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, robbed two ebul­lient­ly tal­ent­ed groups of play­ers of their chances.

​When Den­nis Lawrence rose high­est to send the So­ca War­riors to Ger­many, many felt the sport, first of­fi­cial­ly or­gan­ised as the Trinidad Am­a­teur Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TAFA) on Ju­ly 23, 1908, and a FI­FA mem­ber since 1964, had fi­nal­ly turned the cor­ner.

​Af­ter the pomp, decades of ex­pe­ri­ence evap­o­rat­ed from the se­nior men’s team when 13 play­ers re­tired from the in­ter­na­tion­al game fol­low­ing a dis­pute with the then T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF).

​Car­los Ed­wards, an 18-year vet­er­an with 97 se­nior caps to his cred­it, says foot­ball hasn’t re­cov­ered just yet.

“We went 10 steps back­wards when we qual­i­fied in 2006,” Ed­wards weighed in. “The ad­min­is­tra­tion didn't look at the longevi­ty in terms of what is the next step, and we just, not we, but they let every­thing just take a back­seat and didn't re­al­ly care about where the foot­ball was go­ing af­ter the 2006 cam­paign.”

Ed­wards be­lieves his for­mer cap­tain can be the cat­a­lyst for re­vers­ing the dam­age. Both Jones and Ed­wards think widen­ing the fo­cus is the on­ly so­lu­tion to what ails the lo­cal game.

"We have to do a bet­ter job of de­vel­op­ing and struc­tur­ing the youth part of it," said Jones. “I think we need to get a bit bet­ter in terms of the struc­ture of coach­ing so that we can get bet­ter and help de­vel­op more in the fu­ture.

“We all know we don't have a func­tion­ing Un­der-23 pro­gramme, so the U-17s and U-20s are very in­te­gral in how we progress, and if we're not able to put prop­er struc­ture and in­volve more con­tact hours for these young play­ers, we'll be in a po­si­tion that we've been in for some years now.”

Ed­wards is look­ing ever fur­ther away from the na­tion­al struc­ture and calls for a more con­sid­ered ex­am­i­na­tion of tal­ent in­dige­nous to the twin is­lands.

“When you look back at it, grass­roots is where I start­ed, he said “There's a lot of po­ten­tial that is be­ing over­looked in the coun­try. And we need to start go­ing back in­to the zon­al as­pect of foot­ball in T&T. It's all well and good to go over­seas, be­cause some of those play­ers have a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence, but you can't turn a blind eye to the lo­cal boys.”

On Wednes­day, as prepa­ra­tions were be­ing made in Mu­cu­rapo, an­oth­er of their num­ber, Brent San­cho, like Jones, shared his be­lief that the Sec­ondary School’s Foot­ball League (SS­FL) can­not func­tion as a sole in­cu­ba­tor for youth tal­ent.

“I don’t think util­is­ing the SS­FL as a plat­form to de­vel­op play­ers is the right way,” San­cho said “It is what we have now, so yes we could im­prove it but i think some­thing that is sus­tain­able and can help our coun­try needs to be a broad­er ap­proach, an acad­e­my ap­proach like most of the oth­er coun­tries in Con­ca­caf are do­ing.”

For his part, Yorke, in the mo­ments af­ter the Ja­maica game, said he was keen to see out the re­main­ing six months of his con­tract; what ob­tains af­ter is up to those he re­ferred to as above his pay grade.