Gally, Lawrence, Latas endorse National Training Centre

The news which was revealed by Sports Minister Darryl Smith and TTFA president David John-Williams, and endorsed by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, was the top of the agenda on the visit by the FIFA chief last week.

“This has been a long time coming. It is the best thing that can happen for football in Trinidad and Tobago,” Everald “Gally” Cummings said in an interview on the TTFA website.

“We need to accept and understand our way of doing things and why it is important and I think this establishment will allow us to do this,” he continued.

“Something like this I felt should have been there since the days when myself, Dick Furlonge, Leroy De Leon, Jan Steadman and the Dupreys were playing the game.

“People were saying these boys should be kept together in a training environment. Even though we all ended up playing on the national team, we did it the hard way by working on our own and playing in the North American Soccer League back then. “But now it seems to be coming to fruition which I commend the FA for.

“Hopefully for this generation the national training centre will make things a bit more easier for them,” Cummings said.

“This will now allow our players to be housed and trained regularly, coaching courses can take place more than normal because in my days I had to travel to Europe and South America to get my licences and now coaches will have the chance to undergo similar courses right here at home,” said Cummings.

He also commended the TTFA for its intentions of also establishing a national football museum.

“I want to commend the TTFA for this. I also heard that there were images of our past and present teams and players put up in the corridors of the dressing rooms at the (Hasely Crawford) Stadium which is a good start because we need to remember and highlight our own before waiting for others to do it,” he said.

Current national team coach Dennis Lawrence also spoke on the “home of football” having come from an environment at Everton and Wigan Athletic where the various facilities for development are a norm and recognising now that the TTFA will try to create a similar environment in Couva.

“To have a national training centre, in fact a home for football, allows you to firstly be able to plan and also deliver,” Lawrence said.

“It also allows work to be done in a constructive way, allowing the players to be focused without distractions and therefore I think it’s an amazing accomplishment that Trinidad and Tobago football can only benefit from.” Latapy, currently the head coach of the TT Under-15 and Under-17 teams, also played under the guidance of Cummings with the Strike Squad (of the late 1980s) but entered a professional environment at club level when he moved to Portugal to join Academica in the early 90s.

Throughout his illustrious career as a player and then as a coach, Latapy has spent most of his football hours at advanced centres. “A national training centre is vital and essential in my view for us to get back to that place where I think we should be in Caribbean football and then look to reach higher in CONCACAF,” Latapy said.

“It would be a place where we can house, feed and teach our kids the right things that would help to change the way they think about the game. We can have the kids in there every weekend which gives the coaches more time to work with them.

“We can do a session or two in the week which will help the players to also concentrate on their education at school and then have them come in on the weekends with two sessions and maybe a game on the weekend.

This will definitely be welcomed for the benefit of our game. This will give our young men the opportunity to have a proper chance of playing professionally and changing their lives,” Latapy added.