PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – President of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA), Kieron Edwards, has revealed that the asking price of former national men’s head coach, Dwight Yorke, was too high.
On Thursday, the TTFA announced that they had split ways with Yorke “by mutual agreement” after the two sides failed to reach a consensus on revised contractual terms and remuneration.
The 54-year-old Yorke was hired by the TTFA in November 2024 and given a mandate to guide T&T to the 2026 World Cup.
However, he failed to do so, as T&T finished third in Group B behind Jamaica and eventual winners Curaçao, who qualified for their first-ever FIFA World Cup.
Speaking in an exclusive interview on i95.5 FM on Thursday, Edwards admitted that the TTFA was not in a financial position to pay the salary Yorke had requested.
“I want to start by saying that, being the president of the executive coming off of normalisation, one of the things that we said was that never again is T&T to be put in a place where we are put under normalisation by FIFA based on finances. We need to run the organisation prudently, and we need to make sure our programmes are sustainable, ” Edwards explained.
“During the World Cup campaign, we could have afforded to pay a bit more for coach Yorke. We know, and everyone knows, that during that period of final qualification, sponsors are more on board. We know the culture of sponsors in T&T; we are hoping to change it over the next couple of years, but the sponsors were on board for the World Cup campaign, so we could afford to do it.
“Ensuring that the programme was sustainable, we had discussions with coach Yorke to look at revising his salary and the salary of his coaching staff, and we couldn’t reach that conclusion in terms of keeping him on…We would have given him some offers, we would have countered, we would have given him some offers, and he would have countered, and the numbers weren’t adding up in terms of the sustainability of the programme,” the president further added.
Edwards said Yorke’s staff was terminated in December and had been fully paid. However, he said Yorke owed around US$158,000 to the TTFA, including salary and outstanding bonuses, which he promised would be settled soon.
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