The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is now look­ing ahead af­ter an un­suc­cess­ful Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign in Cos­ta Ri­ca pro­duced much promise.

Fol­low­ing two wins and a drawn match in San Jose, the Ju­nior So­ca War­riors team need­ed to win against the host team to ad­vance but went un­der 2-0.

Na­tion­al coach Shawn Coop­er said he was pleased with the per­for­mance but was un­for­tu­nate not to have done bet­ter in the en­counter.

The TTFA said yes­ter­day it recog­nised and ap­plaud­ed the ded­i­ca­tion, ef­fort, and de­ter­mi­na­tion dis­played through­out the tour­na­ment, which high­light­ed the po­ten­tial of the young play­ers, and not­ed it will take steps to bet­ter the per­for­mances and re­sults in the fu­ture by con­duct­ing a re­view and de­vel­op­ment as­sess­ment and en­hanc­ing the struc­ture with key per­son­nel and tech­nol­o­gy.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Kieron Ed­wards-led TTFA al­so promised to se­cure in­vest­ments for long-term growth and com­mit to women’s foot­ball for holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTFA, a re­view & fu­ture de­vel­op­ment: “As part of our com­mit­ment to progress, the TTFA will con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the team’s per­for­mance, analysing key ar­eas of prepa­ra­tion, com­pe­ti­tion, and play­er de­vel­op­ment. This will in­volve con­sul­ta­tions with the tech­ni­cal staff, sports sci­ence pro­fes­sion­als, and key stake­hold­ers to en­sure a struc­tured and strate­gic ap­proach to youth de­vel­op­ment. The find­ings will guide spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion in fu­ture cam­paigns,” stat­ed Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards.

With FI­FA’s new an­nu­al U-17 World Cup for­mat now in place, sev­er­al mem­bers of this squad re­main el­i­gi­ble to com­pete in next year’s qual­i­fiers, while oth­ers will tran­si­tion to the U-20 lev­el. This con­ti­nu­ity pro­vides an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en our youth de­vel­op­ment path­way, en­sur­ing that our best tal­ents are giv­en the nec­es­sary re­sources to suc­ceed.

The re­lease al­so point­ed to some key ar­eas of fo­cus for the TTFA mov­ing for­ward:

En­hanc­ing Our Struc­ture with Key Per­son­nel & Tech­nol­o­gy— "The TTFA recog­nis­es that sus­tained suc­cess re­quires not on­ly tal­ent­ed play­ers but al­so a well-struc­tured sup­port sys­tem. With­in our fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty, we are com­mit­ted to en­hanc­ing our tech­ni­cal pro­grams by in­cor­po­rat­ing key per­son­nel, in­clud­ing spe­cialised coach­ing staff, sports sci­ence ex­perts, and per­for­mance an­a­lysts to op­ti­mise play­er de­vel­op­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we will ex­plore the use of tech­nol­o­gy such as video analy­sis tools, GPS track­ing, and mod­ern scout­ing sys­tems to bet­ter as­sess play­er progress and en­hance match prepa­ra­tion.”

Se­cur­ing In­vest­ment for Long-Term Growth— "While we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­in our cur­rent bud­getary frame­work, the TTFA ac­knowl­edges that ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment is cru­cial to achiev­ing our long-term ob­jec­tives. We are ac­tive­ly seek­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships and spon­sor­ships from cor­po­rate en­ti­ties, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers who share our vi­sion for foot­ball de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go. In­vest­ment in youth pro­grams will not on­ly el­e­vate our na­tion­al teams but al­so con­tribute to the over­all growth of foot­ball in the coun­try.”

“Com­mit­ment to Women’s Foot­ball & Holis­tic De­vel­op­ment—The TTFA re­mains equal­ly com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of women’s foot­ball, en­sur­ing that our fe­male youth teams re­ceive the same lev­el of fo­cus, prepa­ra­tion, and com­pet­i­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties as their male coun­ter­parts. Our strate­gic plan will em­pha­sise equal in­vest­ment in coach­ing, scout­ing, and train­ing fa­cil­i­ties to en­sure that our women’s teams can com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly at re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.”