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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Yorke, King in shortlist for Soca Warriors head coaching job

by

WALTER ALIBEY
279 days ago
20241017

For­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al foot­baller now turn coach Dwight Yorke and Derek King, the cur­rent in­ter­im coach of the se­nior men’s So­ca War­riors team, have been con­firmed in a short­list of five coach­es for the head coach job of the coun­try’s se­nior na­tion­al men’s team. 

The coach will be cho­sen at the end of the month, said Kieri­on Ed­wards, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

How­ev­er, the se­lec­tion of the two T&T coach­es has sig­nalled the end of a process that in­clud­ed more than 400 coach­es from T&T, North, Cen­tral, and South Amer­i­ca, and Eu­rope the TTFA pres­i­dent said. 

The fo­cus on the se­lec­tion of the top coach­ing job comes fol­low­ing the sack­ing of An­gus Eve in Ju­ly. Still, it has since be­come a point of dire need af­ter the So­ca War­riors de­feat­ed Cu­ba 3-1 at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, to stay in League-A of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League. 

Ed­wards told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he was im­pressed with the en­er­gy shown in that game, but with the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion set to im­ple­ment a new strat­e­gy in 2025 ahead of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers, the new coach will be crit­i­cal, he not­ed. 

“I want to as­sure you that both Dwight Yorke and Derek King are two of the five that we’re look­ing at. I think with the work that Derek has done for the last two FI­FA win­dows, es­pe­cial­ly this last win­dow. We know that the first win­dow was tough for him to in­stil his idea in the guys, but we saw a glimpse of it in the Hon­duras game, dur­ing the first 30 min­utes or even the first half.” 

Ed­wards said, “But the goals took the win out of their sail a bit, which was un­for­tu­nate be­cause we had a play­er down. We were play­ing with 10 men, and they cap­i­talised on that, and it was dif­fi­cult in the sec­ond half. I think Derek has proven him­self wor­thy for the po­si­tion, and of course, Dwight is there and there­about, and there are a few oth­ers who I would not name at this time.”  

He not­ed fur­ther, “I think those two are names that the coun­try is ex­pect­ing to be there, so I am al­low­ing that to hap­pen, plus we’re work­ing with agents and man­agers of oth­er coach­es right now to have some dis­cus­sions, and hope­ful­ly by the end of the week­end we can con­clude those dis­cus­sions.” 

Yorke rep­re­sent­ed As­ton Vil­la, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Black­burn Rovers, Birm­ing­ham City, and Sun­der­land in the top-flight Eng­lish Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, and as a coach, he shook off a se­ries of snubs in Eu­rope to claim suc­cess at Macarthur FC in the Aus­tralian A-League in 2022. 

He is now be­ing con­sid­ered the over­whelm­ing choice among the lo­cal foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty. 

Yorke com­plet­ed his Lev­el B coach­ing badge and in 2010 was quot­ed as be­ing in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing a ca­reer in coach­ing, ide­al­ly with As­ton Vil­la. Due to Yorke’s glam­orous play­ing ca­reer, it is ru­moured that arrange­ments are al­ready be­ing made for his salary. 

Ed­wards said salaries would be cru­cial to the se­lec­tion of the coach as well as his staff. The new coach will al­so have the op­tion to de­cide on in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly teams that the So­ca War­riors can play against dur­ing the com­ing FI­FA win­dow.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, “We have about five peo­ple we’re look­ing at in terms of op­tions who fit the bill of the cam­paign that we’re look­ing at for the style of foot­ball that we want to play.

“And not just the cam­paign, but al­so it would lend to the as­so­ci­a­tion in terms of our de­vel­op­ment. So it’s im­por­tant be­cause we have a new strate­gic plan that we’re rolling out ear­ly in 2025, and the coach would have to be part of that in terms of keep­ing our na­tion­al teams en­gaged and so on.” 


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