Remembering Leo Beenhakker

It must have come as bittersweet news to the current coach of the TT senior men's football team, Dwight Yorke, to hear of the passing of the coach who took the team he captained to the 2006 World Cup.

Dutch right winger Leo Beenhakker served local football twice, most notably as the head coach who took a TT team to a World Cup competition. Mr Beenhakker passed away on Thursday at the age of 82.

The Soca Warriors played three matches in Berlin, starting their outing with a 0–0 draw against Sweden, serving notice that they were there to be taken seriously. After his 2005-2006 tenure as TT's head coach, Mr Beenhakker was appointed the first foreign manager of the Polish men's national football team, taking them to the UEFA European Championship for the first time in 2007.

His work with these two teams earned him Poland's Order of Polonia Restituta and TT's Chaconia Medal Gold. Over his career as a manager, coach and technical adviser that lasted from 1965 to 2018, Mr Beenhakker coached four national teams, including those of Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, and more than a dozen professional football clubs. He would return to serve as director of football in TT between 2013 and 2015. For Yorke, Mr Beenhakker was a man who inspired his team as players and as human beings. Striker Stern John remembered him as a father and a mentor who "guided me not just as a player, but as a person." Defender Brent Sancho described his management style as involved and individual, engaging each player on the team.

The TT Football Association underlined these sentiments, noting that Mr Beenhakker “led with integrity, tactical brilliance and a deep respect for our players and our culture.”

Mr Beenhakker is not the only coach to have had a profound impact on the TT men's football team.

Prior to Yorke's tenure, there have been more than four-dozen team managers since 1964, including Everald "Gally" Cummings who was present for this country's two previous near-miss attempts to qualify for the World Cup, first on the field and then as coach of the Strike Squad.

When Mr Beenhakker took up the job in 2005, TT was at the bottom of the table in their qualifying campaign with one point out of three. Getting from there to Berlin demanded something special and he delivered.

Now the role falls to Yorke who follows Mr Cummings in translating his skill as a player into a role as head coach, called on to guide and inspire a new team to aspirations of glory.

Mr Beenhakker's example is both an inspiration and a benchmark.