Every time the Caribbean, and par­tic­u­lar­ly T&T, faces a down­turn in foot­ball or crick­et—whether it’s a string of loss­es, un­der­whelm­ing tour­na­ment per­for­mances, or an over­all lack of com­pet­i­tive­ness—the same old nar­ra­tive re-emerges like clock­work: “We’re not in­vest­ing enough in grass­roots.”

It’s be­come our most con­ve­nient fall-back. A kind of ver­bal se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket that lead­ers, fans, and for­mer play­ers alike cling to when they can’t quite ex­plain why our elite ath­letes and teams fall short. But we must ask our­selves: Is it re­al­ly a lack of grass­roots de­vel­op­ment? Or is that just an easy ex­cuse mask­ing deep­er, more un­com­fort­able truths?

The grass­roots mantra: rhetoric or re­al­i­ty?

From Prime Min­is­ters to pun­dits, from tech­ni­cal di­rec­tors to taxi dri­vers, the mantra of “fo­cus on grass­roots” has be­come a sa­cred gospel. It’s fre­quent­ly used to ar­gue that re­sources should be pulled from the se­nior lev­el—less in­vest­ment in na­tion­al teams, less trav­el, few­er com­pe­ti­tions—and redi­rect­ed to­ward youth de­vel­op­ment.

But here’s the twist: we’ve been do­ing that. Or at least, we’ve been say­ing we are.

Over the past two decades, dozens of grass­roots pro­grammes have been rolled out across T&T and the wider Caribbean. Some were spear­head­ed by na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, oth­ers by pri­vate acad­e­mies, re­gion­al sport­ing bod­ies, cor­po­rate spon­sors, even for­mer ath­letes turned de­vel­op­ment ad­vo­cates.

Yes, some of these pro­grammes were poor­ly man­aged. Some were dis­band­ed due to fund­ing is­sues, lack of over­sight, or shifts in ad­min­is­tra­tive pri­or­i­ties. But not all. Many did, in fact, con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly. The ques­tion is: have we ever stopped to as­sess their ac­tu­al im­pact?

What met­rics did we track? What play­ers emerged? What sys­tems stayed in place be­yond the pho­to­shoots and rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­monies? With­out these an­swers, we’re stuck in a cir­cu­lar blame game.

Where did our stars come from?

Let’s take two of our most promis­ing ex­ports: Levi Gar­cia and Tyrese Spicer. Did they just fall from the sky and land in Greece and Toron­to FC, re­spec­tive­ly? Of course not. These young men—like so many oth­ers—emerged from some form of de­vel­op­men­tal ecosys­tem. Whether it was a zon­al pro­gramme, a school league struc­ture, a pri­vate acad­e­my, a com­mu­ni­ty coach who cared, or a na­tion­al youth ini­tia­tive that sparked their jour­ney. There was a foun­da­tion. Some­thing did ex­ist.

To sug­gest that there is no grass­roots de­vel­op­ment in place is to dis­re­spect the work done by those who have been toil­ing qui­et­ly for years—those who coached in mud­dy fields, co­or­di­nat­ed ses­sions with­out equip­ment, men­tored kids with­out ex­pect­ing glo­ry.

So per­haps the re­al is­sue isn’t ab­sence of grass­roots, but rather mis­man­age­ment of grass­roots ef­forts, and an in­abil­i­ty to trans­late de­vel­op­ment in­to long-term, elite-lev­el re­sults.

Mis­di­ag­no­sis and mis­di­rec­tion

There’s an even big­ger risk in blind­ly re­peat­ing this nar­ra­tive: it shifts ac­count­abil­i­ty away from those man­ag­ing cur­rent-day op­er­a­tions.

When our na­tion­al se­nior teams are un­der­per­form­ing, the first in­stinct shouldn’t be to tear down the se­nior struc­ture and point fin­gers at what wasn’t done ten years ago. What about what’s be­ing done now?

Are our cur­rent squads be­ing prop­er­ly pre­pared?

Are our na­tion­al coach­es equipped with the re­sources they need?

Are our ad­min­is­tra­tors fo­cused, aligned, and trans­par­ent?

Are we mak­ing strate­gic de­ci­sions or just re­act­ing emo­tion­al­ly?

It’s easy to scape­goat the past. Much hard­er to fix the present.

A dan­ger­ous sug­ges­tion, a risky strat­e­gy

Just two years ago, a re­gion­al foot­ball of­fi­cial se­ri­ous­ly sug­gest­ed to me that T&T should with­draw from the 2026 World Cup Qual­i­fiers al­to­geth­er. In­stead of lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment or pri­vate sec­tor for fund­ing to com­pete, he ad­vised that the coun­try should “put every­thing”—and he meant every­thing—in­to an Un­der-17 and U-15 pro­gramme.

Let that sink in.

Scrap the se­nior team. Ig­nore the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion. Bet the en­tire house on teenagers. So what hap­pens be­tween now and 2030 while we wait for these kids to grow up? Do we dis­ap­pear from the glob­al stage? Is this what de­vel­op­ment means—aban­don­ment of the present for a hy­po­thet­i­cal fu­ture?

And what hap­pens if in 2030, that gen­er­a­tion still doesn’t qual­i­fy for a World Cup? Then what? Push every­thing to 2038?

It’s eeri­ly sim­i­lar to the ar­gu­ment of­ten made in the fight against crime in our coun­try: “We can’t solve crime now un­til we ad­dress the root caus­es. We need to fix the fam­i­lies, schools, par­ent­ing, ear­ly child­hood trau­ma.”

That’s all true, but what hap­pens to the crim­i­nals cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing? Are we say­ing we just let things spi­ral for the next decade while we wait for bet­ter-be­haved cit­i­zens to emerge?

Whether it’s crime or sport, you can­not ne­glect the now while plan­ning for the fu­ture.

The need for hon­est re­view

If we tru­ly care about de­vel­op­ment, then we need to re­view—hon­est­ly and trans­par­ent­ly—what grass­roots and youth pro­grammes have ex­ist­ed over the years. We must iden­ti­fy:

Which ones worked? Which ones failed?

Which pro­duced play­ers who went on to high­er lev­els? When Kevin Moli­no went to two back-to-back Youth World Cups in 2007 and ‘09, what was he do­ing at age 14? Train­ing on his own in Care­nage? No! He was part of a na­tion­al set-up be­tween 2004-2005, co­or­di­nat­ed by the TTFF (T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion) and then head coach An­ton Corneal and Hut­son Charles.

What were the suc­cess fac­tors? How can we in­sti­tu­tion­alise the wins and learn from the fail­ures?

This re­quires da­ta. It re­quires hu­mil­i­ty. It re­quires break­ing the cy­cle of re­brand­ing old ideas as new so­lu­tions.

Con­clu­sion: We can’t keep blam­ing the seed

The next time a team un­der­per­forms, re­sist the urge to chant the easy cho­rus of “We need to fo­cus on grass­roots.” Yes, grass­roots de­vel­op­ment is es­sen­tial. No one de­nies that but that alone doesn’t ex­plain our stag­na­tion at the top.

Be­cause at some point, we have to stop blam­ing the seed—and start ques­tion­ing the farm­ers, the tools, and the de­ci­sions made at har­vest time.