Barbados Names Kent Hall Interim Head Coach of National Football Team

Former midfield maestro Kent Hall could be the one to turn around the fortunes of the Barbados Tridents.

That is the view of football legend Anthony ‘Daisy’ Clarke, who has backed the Barbados Football Association’s (BFA) decision to name Hall as the interim head coach of the national team.

In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the BFA announced the appointment of Hall as the interim head coach of the Barbados senior men’s national football team with immediate effect until December 31, 2024.

He was selected from a field of over 30 applicants, most of them from overseas.

Hall will take over from technical director Emmerson Boyce, who had assumed head coaching duties since Portugese Orlando da Costa and the BFA mutually parted ways back in November2023.

The 45 year-old Hall, represented Barbados at the senior international level from 2003-2006 and is the current head of coaching education at the BFA.

He is also a certified FIFA & Concacaf coach educator, and a Concacaf B License holder who previously served as assistant men’s national coach and head coach of the Barbados Under-20 national team.

Speaking to Barbados TODAY moments after the news broke, Clarke, highly regarded as one of the island’s best midfielders, said while he believed Hall had the qualifications and experience to excel at the job, he warned it would not be an easy task.

“He has been around for some time now. He qualified himself to the level that he should be able to get that job done at this time. With his playing experience and coaching qualifications he should be well suited to do the job,” Clarke, who tried out for professional Scottish club Hearts in his heyday, pointed out.

“But he’s going to be under pressure to deliver immediate results. Barbados has one of its lowest rankings ever, so it is a mammoth task to lift the team at this time. I don’t think they can go any lower, they can only improve at this time.

“It’s going to be hard work, and he’s going to be under the microscope, but at the same time it’s an excellent opportunity to show his worth and his ability to elevate the team on the international stage starting with the Concacaf level,” he added.

Hall, who served as assistant head coach under Russell Latapy in 2022, said he was looking forward to his new role.

“It’s certainly a job that I have been interested in for a long time. I’ve always had a dream about having this position. I am relishing the opportunity to take the reins and see what we can do. Right now we haven’t had the best results for our senior men’s national team and I am really hoping that we can change though fortunes,” he said.

“The initial focus, obviously, is trying to get in there and establish a philosophy of play that we want to have. We know the World Cup qualifying campaign is a tough one so we will use these games to help us gauge where we are and help us get experience.

“We will look towards the Nations League to start building towards what we hope is the next generation of Barbados football that would get us to where we want to be which is qualifying for major tournaments in the future,” Hall added.