TTFA appoints King as senior team head coach

Derek King has been ap­point­ed coach of the T&T se­nior men’s team on a full-time ba­sis. Mere months af­ter be­ing the in­ter­im re­place­ment for for­mer coach Dwight Yorke, who to part­ed ways with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion fol­low­ing a dis­as­trous World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee fi­nal­ly made it of­fi­cial.

A re­lease on Mon­day from the par­ent T&TFA re­vealed that King was giv­en a one-year con­tract in the first in­stance, with an op­tion for re­new­al.

King, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, said, “It is an ho­n­our to lead the T&T Men’s Na­tion­al Team. To­geth­er with the play­ers and staff, we will work to build a clear iden­ti­ty, com­pete at the high­est lev­el and make the na­tion proud. I ful­ly un­der­stand the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that comes with rep­re­sent­ing our coun­try, and I em­brace that chal­lenge with fo­cus and de­ter­mi­na­tion.”

“My com­mit­ment is to build a dis­ci­plined, hard-work­ing and com­pet­i­tive team. We will de­mand high stan­dards, ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism at every lev­el, both on and off the field. Our ob­jec­tive is sim­ple: to com­pete, to im­prove and to make the peo­ple of T&T proud. We will work tire­less­ly to en­sure that every time we step on­to the field, we rep­re­sent the pas­sion and spir­it of our na­tion.”

King, 46, has not on­ly won do­mes­tic Pro­fes­sion­al League ti­tles with Joe Pub­lic and North East Stars but al­so cap­tured the 2014 Caribbean Men’s Un­der-20 ti­tle as head coach of T&T. A for­mer na­tion­al youth and se­nior team de­fend­er whose ca­reer end­ed at age 24 due to in­jury, played 33 times and scored one goal for the se­nior team, be­fore he tast­ed ear­ly suc­cess in his man­age­r­i­al ca­reer when he won the T&T Pro League with Joe Pub­lic in 2009/10.

Soon af­ter, he served as as­sis­tant coach to Stephen Hart (2013-2016), un­der whom T&T reached con­sec­u­tive Gold Cup quar­ter-fi­nals in 2013 and 2015, while al­so at­tain­ing a FI­FA rank­ing of 49. Fol­low­ing Hart’s de­par­ture from the T&T se­nior team af­ter be­ing fired by now-de­ceased for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent David John Williams, King guid­ed North East Stars to the TT Pro League in 2016-2017 and, at the time, be­came one of on­ly two coach­es to win the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tion with two teams.

Next, King took over the reins at T&T Su­per League club FC San­ta Rosa and led The Canons to that com­pe­ti­tion’s ti­tle in 2017-18. King, a na­tive Ari­ma, and who served as an as­sis­tant to for­mer se­nior men’s head coach An­gus Eve, al­so fol­lowed Hart to Cana­di­an Pre­mier League club Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers, serv­ing as as­sis­tant coach for three years.

At the na­tion­al team lev­el, King over­saw T&T’s se­nior team prepa­ra­tions as in­ter­im coach for the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League match­es against Hon­duras and French Guiana in Sep­tem­ber 2024, be­fore Yorke was hired on No­vem­ber 1 of that year to guide T&T back to the World Cup.