WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Though en­gulfed by the ex­cite­ment of be­ing ap­point­ed the coun­try’s na­tion­al coach, for­mer na­tion­al and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er Dwight Yorke is not naive to his dif­fi­cul­ty in tak­ing the coun­try to its sec­ond FI­FA World Cup in his­to­ry.

“I’m qui­et­ly con­fi­dent that we can get the job done, but I’m un­der no delu­sion that the job at hand is very chal­leng­ing,” Yorke as­sured in a beIN Sports talk. beIN Sports is a lead­ing sports chan­nel in the Mid­dle East and North Africa (MENA) re­gion, and al­so has chan­nels in oth­er parts of the world, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, and New Zealand.

He was in­tro­duced to the pub­lic via a grand un­veil­ing at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, on No­vem­ber 16, amid ex­cite­ment from a cross-sec­tion of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty, which in­clud­ed for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop and Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis.

Hav­ing spent most of his life away from the shores of T&T, Yorke said, “It has been a lit­tle bit chal­leng­ing. I ex­pect that when I de­cide to go in­to man­age­ment, the path­way wouldn’t be as straight­for­ward, as I thought it would be, so I am un­der no delu­sion that get­ting the job and do­ing good at it would have re­quired me to build a plat­form so I can go for­ward. So when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came with Macarthurs FC in Aus­tralia, even though it was a short stint, I thought I had done a rea­son­ably good job at the time, and from there on you think you’ve gained a lit­tle bit of ex­pe­ri­ence.”

“I didn’t know the play­ers per­son­al­ly, but I’ve got an as­sis­tant who has been in the sys­tem, and Rus­sell Lat­apy who knows more about the lo­cal game, he is one of my as­sis­tants. I’ve been al­lowed to bring in two oth­ers, my strength and con­di­tion­ing coach (An­tho­ny Cera) as well as Neil Wood who has been at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, so I’ve been backed in that sense, which you need to be backed, to achieve your goals. So I’m qui­et­ly con­fi­dent that we can get the job done, but I’m un­der no delu­sion that the job at hand isn’t very chal­leng­ing,” Yorke ex­plained.

Since his ar­rival to lo­cal soil, Yorke spent a week at a live-in camp with the play­ers, who com­prised most­ly of lo­cal­ly-based play­ers and a few based in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The camp con­clud­ed with his charges edg­ing lo­cal T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League cam­paign­ers De­fence Force 1-0 in a prac­tice match at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

Yorke and his staff were hop­ing to se­cure an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match dur­ing the FI­FA Win­dow of No­vem­ber 11-19, how­ev­er, he told re­porters that since there was no prac­tice game, they used the time to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the play­ers and for the play­ers to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the coach­ing staff.

The So­ca War­riors are ex­pect­ed to nail down in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es lat­er this month or next year in Jan­u­ary against Qatar and Sau­di Ara­bia, ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup Pre­lim­i­nar­ies against Cu­ba at home and away in March.

Lat­er in June, Yorke’s War­riors will take the field against St Kitts and Nevis at home in the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers, their third en­counter of the qual­i­fiers, af­ter a 2-2 tie with Grena­da and a 7-1 drub­bing of the Ba­hamas ear­li­er this year.

Yorke said he is ex­cit­ed about his job and wants to work on the play­ers’ abil­i­ty to achieve his goal, “So I’ve got one job to do, which is to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, so that’s ex­cit­ing and I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I’m get­ting in­volved and in my on­ly ses­sion dur­ing the break re­cent­ly, gave me a good look at the play­ers and my am­bi­tion is to im­prove these play­ers.”