Stunning football exit

WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­[email protected]

Ques­tions re­gard­ing whether se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball coach Dwight Yorke would be re­tained fol­low­ing last year’s un­suc­cess­ful World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign were fi­nal­ly an­swered yes­ter­day, when he an­nounced he had made the “dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion” to step down.

How­ev­er, Yorke’s ac­count was in stark con­trast to com­ments made by T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards, who claimed the two par­ties reached a mu­tu­al agree­ment to part ways.

Yorke, 54, was hired on No­vem­ber 1, 2024, with a man­date to guide T&T back to the World Cup for the first time since this coun­try’s lone ap­pear­ance in the Ger­many edi­tion in 2006.

How­ev­er, af­ter T&T fin­ished third in a Con­ca­caf World Cup group com­pris­ing Cu­raçao, Bermu­da and Ja­maica last year, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty was split on whether he should con­tin­ue on with the team.

But in a shock an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, Yorke re­vealed, “It is with a heavy heart that I have made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to step down from my role with the Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al team. Serv­ing as head coach of the se­nior men’s na­tion­al team has been an ho­n­our and a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty I have car­ried with im­mense pride. Rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go at the high­est lev­el of the game is a priv­i­lege that very few ex­pe­ri­ence, and I re­main grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

He added, “From the mo­ment I took charge in No­vem­ber 2024, my fo­cus has been on build­ing some­thing mean­ing­ful—cre­at­ing a strong struc­ture, help­ing play­ers grow in­di­vid­u­al­ly, strength­en­ing us as a team, and rein­vig­o­rat­ing our fan base with con­sis­tent per­for­mances. I re­main con­fi­dent in the work that was un­der­tak­en, the stan­dards that were es­tab­lished, and the foun­da­tion that con­tin­ues to be built for the fu­ture of the na­tion­al team.

“Progress in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball re­quires sta­bil­i­ty, struc­ture, and sus­tained in­vest­ment, and I firm­ly be­lieve that the play­ers demon­strat­ed the com­mit­ment and po­ten­tial nec­es­sary to move the pro­gramme for­ward.”

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, TTFA pres­i­dent Ed­wards told the me­dia, “We would have mu­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to part ways with Dwight Yorke as the head coach of our men’s se­nior na­tion­al team. We would have been in dis­cus­sion for sev­er­al weeks, try­ing to rene­go­ti­ate the salary and the num­bers for both Yorke, as well as his tech­ni­cal staff. That num­ber wasn’t reached.

“We had some fur­ther dis­cus­sions in Feb­ru­ary and we de­cid­ed on the 28th of Feb­ru­ary to part ways and keep the di­a­logue open and the dis­cus­sion open in terms of the fu­ture. But for now, we’re go­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion.”

Yorke was re­port­ed to be col­lect­ing up­wards of US$30,000 month­ly, while col­lec­tive­ly, he and his staff were re­ceiv­ing US$87,000, ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports es­ti­mates.

Asked about Yorke’s salary, Ed­wards said, “I would not want to dis­close the salary of for­mer coach Yorke, but it’s not up­wards of 30,000. I could say that is less than 30,000, but I would not put a fig­ure on his salary at that state, which is less than 30,000 US dol­lars paid per month. And we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in a re­spect­ful and good man­ner at the FA, so we wouldn’t want to say what his salary is or wasn’t, but it’s not up­wards of 30,000.”

Ed­wards al­so re­fused to re­veal the out­stand­ing amount Yorke is owed on the re­main­der his con­tract.

Ed­wards did say the TTFA has a good re­la­tion­ship with the for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and T&T skip­per and strik­er, and would ho­n­our his con­tract in full.

At­tempts to reach Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day. His com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer re­quest­ed that ques­tions be sent via What­sApp but there was still no re­sponse up to press time.

How­ev­er, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the min­istry, David Nakhid, him­self al­so a for­mer T&T skip­per, be­lieves a com­pro­mise may have been pos­si­ble.

“We might not agree with it or un­der­stand it, but whether you agree that he did a good job of coach­ing a team or not, you would agree that there was some im­prove­ment at the end and that he is a brand name. Dwight Yorke is a brand name that could bring a lot of recog­ni­tion to the pro­gramme, es­pe­cial­ly now, as we are in the wilder­ness, so to speak,” Nakhid told Guardian Me­dia

“We have missed the World Cup cy­cle, and go­ing for­ward, we need to re­build. And I think that Dwight would have been pre­pared to com­pro­mise on his salary or re­duce his salary, and a way to go for­ward, maybe a bit more coach­ing as far as de­vel­op­ment is con­cerned with the younger play­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, so that he stays here a bit more. I think if those things were spo­ken to Dwight by the TTFA, I think there would have been a com­pro­mise agreed, and we could have moved for­ward.”

Mean­while, for­mer min­is­ter of sports un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Brent San­cho, be­lieves the part­ing of ways be­tween the Yorke and the TTFA was ex­pect­ed due to the huge cost fac­tor in­volved with the tech­ni­cal staff.

“I don’t know if we heard the two dif­fer­ent sides. One is he says he re­signed and the next one said they mu­tu­al­ly part­ed ways. But any­way, it’s not sur­pris­ing, sim­ply be­cause you would have felt that de­spite the fact that there were signs, from a play­ing per­spec­tive, that the team looked a lit­tle bit more pleas­ing on the eye, the fact re­mains that these things, when you have costs, that is a ma­jor vari­able,” San­cho said.

“You know that some­thing like this was al­ways right around the cor­ner, and you know, of course, we have Dwight Yorke say­ing in an in­ter­view that he has so many more months left on his con­tract. As much as he is a brand name, this is a re­sults-based busi­ness. And at the end of the day, if you cal­cu­late the fact that the team prob­a­bly did not achieve the goal, which is to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, then, ob­vi­ous­ly, the ar­gu­ment will al­ways go in a cer­tain di­rec­tion.”