I find the com­mon or gar­den va­ri­ety Eu­ro­pean league foot­ball served up to us on any giv­en day by lo­cal ca­ble tele­vi­sion to be im­mense­ly bor­ing. I much pre­fer to watch a match from the Sau­di Pro League or the South African Pre­mier­ship than suf­fer through the pre­dictabil­i­ty of Man­ches­ter City ver­sus Leeds Unit­ed or Paris Saint-Ger­main against Lens.

So a few weeks ago, I was in­trigued by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of De­porti­vo Tachi­ra (Venezuela) at home to The Strongest (Bo­livia) in CON­MEBOL's (South Amer­i­can Con­fed­er­a­tion, for the unini­ti­at­ed) Co­pa Lib­er­ta­dores. I was not dis­ap­point­ed by these two clubs, which are un­known to the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal foot­ball fans who con­strain them­selves to gorg­ing on Eu­ro­pean fare.

I saw a very good crowd, a good lev­el of play, for­eign play­ers from Ar­genti­na, Colom­bia, Pana­ma, Uruguay, and Al­varo Re­co­ba (the for­mer In­ter Mi­lan and Uruguay star) as head coach on the Venezue­lan bench. So, I asked my­self the ques­tion I have al­ways asked my­self - why does Trinidad and To­ba­go not have play­ers in a league that is lit­er­al­ly next door, while we send play­ers to non­de­script clubs in Viet­nam, In­dia, North­ern Cyprus, Oman, the Unit­ed States and sundry oth­er points? 

While the politi­cians, econ­o­mists and me­dia an­a­lysts de­bate OFAC li­cences, un­cer­tain ac­cess to Venezue­lan Drag­on gas and who will se­duce Del­cy Ro­driguez to play ball with us af­ter the tur­bu­lent geopol­i­tics of re­cent times, which saw the de­c­la­ra­tion of our Prime Min­is­ter to be "per­sona non gra­ta" by the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, why are lo­cal foot­ball peo­ple not de­bat­ing or ex­plor­ing ac­cess to Venezuela's top pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball league, Liga FUTVE, which has an un­in­ter­rupt­ed his­to­ry of more than one hun­dred years since its foun­da­tion in 1921?

Venezuela has nev­er ap­peared in the men's World Cup but we have (which is ob­vi­ous­ly due to the strength of South Amer­i­can op­po­si­tion), and both coun­tries have twice par­tic­i­pat­ed in FI­FA's Un­der-20 World Cup, with a re­mark­able run­ner-up fin­ish for the Venezue­lans in 2017. They have al­so played in the FI­FA U-17 World Cup three times, while we have ap­peared twice, with their best re­sult be­ing a round of 16 fin­ish in 2023. In Olympic foot­ball (U-23), which we have nev­er en­joyed, Venezuela holds the ad­van­tage, hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed four times (1980, 1984, 1996, and 2000). Venezue­lan foot­ball, the poor re­la­tion of the South Amer­i­can fam­i­ly (along with Bo­livia), is still stronger than ours at na­tion­al team lev­el, but al­so where league foot­ball is con­cerned. 

Liga FUTVE: Plat­form league

Liga FUTVE, Venezuela's pro­fes­sion­al league, may not be glob­al­ly recog­nised as ma­jor leagues in Eu­rope and South Amer­i­ca are, but it plays a cru­cial role in de­vel­op­ing young foot­ball tal­ent in Venezuela. Im­por­tant­ly, Liga FUTVE of­fers a plat­form in­to CON­MEBOL's Co­pa Lib­er­ta­dores (the equiv­a­lent of UE­FA's Cham­pi­ons League) and Co­pa Su­damer­i­cana (the equiv­a­lent of UE­FA's Eu­ropa League). In­deed, the league, its clubs and acad­e­mies are an es­tab­lished pipeline for young play­ers out of Venezue­lan foot­ball and in­to ma­jor Eu­ro­pean and South Amer­i­can leagues, Liga MX (Mex­i­co) and MLS (Unit­ed States). Four Liga FUTVE teams qual­i­fy an­nu­al­ly for Co­pa Lib­er­ta­dores and the same num­ber for Co­pa Su­damer­i­cana. 

Liga FUTVE's de­vel­op­ment phi­los­o­phy and busi­ness mod­el are based on three pil­lars - re­cruit­ment of ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, im­por­ta­tion of young play­ers on loan from for­eign clubs and de­vel­op­ment of home­grown acad­e­my tal­ents for sale. This niche mod­el has es­tab­lished Liga FUTVE as a launch pad to green­er pas­tures and brought play­ers from Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Colom­bia, Ecuador, Ghana, Nicaragua, Nige­ria, Paraguay, Pe­ru, Por­tu­gal, Ser­bia, Spain and else­where in­to the league - but not ONE play­er from neigh­bour­ing T&T.

The high­est earn­ers in the league can make sub­stan­tial amounts, of­ten ex­ceed­ing US $10,000 per month - the av­er­age wage in the Eng­lish Cham­pi­onship - while the av­er­age salary in the league is es­ti­mat­ed to be around US $3,000 per month. In 2025, trans­fer ac­tiv­i­ty across all clubs was es­ti­mat­ed at US $12 mil­lion. Liga FUTVE en­forces a for­eign play­er cap of eight non-Venezue­lan play­ers per club, of whom on­ly five may be in­clud­ed in the match day squad. 

For the 2026 sea­sons (Aper­tu­ra and Clausura, which equate to our first and sec­ond rounds, a cham­pi­on be­ing crowned for each), there has been a South Amer­i­can in­flux with 42 per­cent of all in­com­ing play­ers com­ing in from Ar­genti­na, Brazil and Colom­bia, an in­flow dri­ven by com­pet­i­tive salaries and ex­po­sure to CON­MEBOL tour­na­ments. There is al­so an up­ward trend of short-term loans from low­er-tier Span­ish and Por­tuguese clubs, pri­mar­i­ly for cre­ative mid­field­ers.

As a point of com­par­i­son and ori­en­ta­tion, Liga FUTVE has a cur­rent to­tal mar­ket val­ue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US $95 mil­lion. By com­par­i­son, the to­tal mar­ket val­ue of all clubs in Viet­nam's V League 1, to which T&T (and now Ja­maica) is send­ing play­ers, is ap­prox­i­mate­ly US $68 mil­lion. In fi­nan­cial terms, Venezuela op­er­ates a big­ger league. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Liga FUTVE’s in­creas­ing pres­ence on dig­i­tal plat­forms and in­ter­na­tion­al TV chan­nels of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tract a glob­al au­di­ence, which could help the league se­cure vi­tal spon­sor­ships and in­crease in­vest­ment, which would be a ma­jor boost for its long-term growth.

"But things bad there"

Venezuela's post-Maduro eco­nom­ic prospects are un­cer­tain, with sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in­clud­ing an un­prece­dent­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, mas­sive for­eign debt ex­ceed­ing US $150 bil­lion, and an oil sec­tor in de­cline. While there is po­ten­tial for re­cov­ery with new in­vest­ments and re­forms, the coun­try faces a long road ahead to sta­bilise its econ­o­my and re­build its gov­er­nance struc­tures. The next sev­er­al months will in­di­cate which road the coun­try is trav­el­ling eco­nom­i­cal­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly - sta­bil­i­ty or tur­moil. Po­lit­i­cal de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion (un­der whose lead­er­ship re­mains to be seen as Del­cy and her op­po­nents ma­noeu­vre un­der Don­ald Trump's short leash while Chav­is­mo's so called "strate­gic al­lies" Chi­na and Rus­sia look on, for now im­po­tent­ly); the lift­ing of op­pres­sive uni­lat­er­al US sanc­tions (which has be­gun); sig­nif­i­cant for­eign in­vest­ments in the coun­try's oil and gas in­dus­tries; amend­ment of eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­to­ry con­trols; and pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment of the na­tion­al econ­o­my, are cen­tral to this ques­tion. 

Draft laws have been in­tro­duced in­to the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to­wards these ends, as, due to po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­ter­nal ten­sions, the Chav­is­tas are in full regime preser­va­tion mode and have adopt­ed a more prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy un­der threat of fur­ther US mil­i­tary ac­tion. USA now con­trols the ma­jor­i­ty of Venezue­lan oil rev­enues, but na­tion­al eco­nom­ic re­vival, which de­liv­ers ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fits for the Venezue­lan peo­ple with­in a year to two, would ob­vi­ous­ly al­so cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for Venezue­lan foot­ball and for its pro­fes­sion­al league. At the same time, po­ten­tial en­try for lo­cal play­ers in­to Liga FUTVE would re­quire strate­gic think­ing and an ap­proach that needs care­ful de­vel­op­ment and un­fold­ing. So time is on our side. But is any lo­cal club even aware of the po­ten­tial for good busi­ness across the Bo­cas? 

Foot­ball sur­vives pol­i­tics

I has­ten to make the point that, by ex­ten­sion, I be­lieve T&T foot­ball should al­so look to the oth­er, more recog­nised and lu­cra­tive leagues of north­ern South Amer­i­ca - Colom­bia and Ecuador - as po­ten­tial mar­kets. These leagues pro­vide the same plat­form as Liga FUTVE for launch in­to Eu­ro­pean foot­ball, Liga MX and MLS. Were I still a play­er to­day, I would have pre­ferred to play in CON­MEBOL rather than Viet­nam, the Por­tuguese fourth di­vi­sion or some mi­nor US out­fit. But when our U-17s and U-20s re­peat­ed­ly fail in in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, it un­der­mines the abil­i­ty of those play­ers to move to any for­eign club.

In­deed, we have squan­dered the for­tunes of even our U-17/20 team - our best ever - which par­tic­i­pat­ed in two con­sec­u­tive FI­FA World Cups (South Ko­rea 2007/Egypt 2009), a gen­er­a­tion the likes of which we have not seen again in two decades. Of those boys, on­ly Kevin Moli­no, Khaleem Hy­land, Shel­don Bateau and Aubrey David went on to play in high­er val­ue leagues, while the rest of the squad dis­ap­peared or be­came jour­ney­man in the lo­cal and low val­ue for­eign leagues. Present-day TTFA con­tin­ues to squan­der our youth tal­ent with its derelict han­dling of our na­tion­al teams. Still, it is nev­er too late to cor­rect course. A new gen­er­a­tion is al­ways com­ing through.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, we have been, and re­main too close-mind­ed, con­temp­tu­ous even, to­wards foot­ball out­side of Eu­rope. This must change. We must short­en our hori­zon and look clos­er to home for pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for our youth. The UNC gov­ern­ment must now find a way to per­suade Del­cy to re­vive and con­sum­mate the PNM-ne­go­ti­at­ed Drag­on gas deal that the Maduro gov­ern­ment can­celled in Oc­to­ber last year while de­scrib­ing T&T as "a US air­craft car­ri­er". We shall see how that goes but foot­ball al­ways sur­vives pol­i­tics. So does any­one in lo­cal foot­ball - those who love to talk about "the busi­ness of foot­ball" - have the vi­sion and savoir-faire to mar­ket our play­ers across the Bo­cas del Drag­on?