"I must stop think­ing. I'll pre­tend that every­thing's all right and then every­thing will be." (from the nov­el "Veroni­ka De­cides to Die" by Paulo Coel­ho, Brazil­ian philoso­pher, 1921-1997)

I stud­ied Paulo Freire at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1970s. He is re­gard­ed as one of the most im­por­tant ed­u­ca­tion the­o­rists of the 20th cen­tu­ry. His great­est work was the sem­i­nal "Ped­a­gogy of the Op­pressed" (1968), which em­braced teach­ing as an act of per­son­al lib­er­a­tion rather than mere trans­mis­sion of knowl­edge from teacher to stu­dent.

The quote above is from his fa­mous nov­el. It cap­tures a mo­ment of over­whelm­ing emo­tion­al pain for the pro­tag­o­nist Veroni­ka, who tries to numb her mind with il­lu­sion just to sur­vive re­al­i­ty. I em­pathise with Veroni­ka every time I think of Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball.

Why? Be­cause the state of the lo­cal game - its ad­min­is­tra­tion and tech­ni­cal lev­el (both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al) - and the ab­solute lack of any se­ri­ous ef­fort by TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) to im­prove it, pro­voke the same repet­i­tive analy­ses and crit­i­cisms year up­on year. Round and round the mul­ber­ry bush. Ad nau­se­am. Noth­ing changes. In fact, to be more pre­cise, noth­ing im­proves and every­thing gets worse. The on­ly hope for san­i­ty is to stop think­ing and ac­cept TTFA's ver­sion of re­al­i­ty. Or to stop fol­low­ing the lo­cal game com­plete­ly. And I can do nei­ther.

Have a look at the key foot­ball sto­ries that broke in the last two weeks (first in Lasana Liburd's on­line mag­a­zine "Wired 868 Vol­ley"): the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) vot­ed to vir­tu­al­ly erase To­ba­go schools from its com­pe­ti­tion due to trav­el costs be­tween our two is­lands; a na­tion­al Un­der-14 team was se­lect­ed by even more du­bi­ous means than nor­mal and went off to com­pe­ti­tion af­ter just a few weeks train­ing; and a T&T Pre­mier League club (Pris­ons) threat­ened to with­draw for the sec­ond time in a year be­cause of fi­nan­cial is­sues with the league, i.e with TTFA. These sto­ries crys­tallise the prob­lem of ter­mi­nal mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion in our youth and elite games.

Mean­time, TTFA's so­cial me­dia hap­pi­ly high­light­ed sto­ries on for­eign-based na­tion­al se­nior team play­ers; a joint com­mem­o­ra­tion of "Safe Sport Day 2026" and a "Call for Col­lec­tive Ac­tion to Pro­tect Ath­letes" by TTFA and UWI; and news about a lo­cal foot­ball camp that cost US $350 per par­tic­i­pant - in oth­er words, the usu­al pub­lic re­la­tions at­tempts at im­age build­ing. Noth­ing that ad­dressed the fun­da­men­tal is­sues of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

To­ba­go is part of Trinidad and To­ba­go

It re­quired the good and nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) to save SS­FL from it­self by guar­an­tee­ing fi­nance (re­port­ed­ly TT $406,000) for trav­el by Trinidad schools to To­ba­go, as well as oth­er ex­pens­es. Sport Min­is­ter Phillip Watts cred­it­ed “the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of the Min­istry, the Sport Com­pa­ny and the SS­FL". Re­mark­ably, TTFA was un­men­tioned and in­vis­i­ble in all of this de­spite the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of SS­FL foot­ball to our na­tion­al youth teams.

It is bad enough that To­ba­go play­ers are usu­al­ly giv­en short shrift in na­tion­al se­lec­tion. To de­ny them vis­i­bil­i­ty on the na­tion­al stage in the biggest youth com­pe­ti­tion avail­able to them would have been crim­i­nal. But the trav­el is­sue tran­scends na­tion­al foot­ball. It ris­es to the lev­el of na­tion­al pol­i­tics. T&T is still ONE coun­try. And a civilised coun­try guar­an­tees equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty for all cit­i­zens.

In 2017/2018, as pres­i­dent of the now de­funct T&T Su­per League, I re­ject­ed the no­tion from some Trinidad clubs that To­ba­go clubs be ex­pelled due to the high cost of in­ter-is­land trav­el. In­stead, we found a so­lu­tion that main­tained the in­tegri­ty of our league and the na­tion­al char­ac­ter of our com­pe­ti­tion, fo­cus­ing on ef­fec­tive plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion (with Caribbean Air­lines) of our trav­el sched­ule.

The men­tal and spir­i­tu­al health of our na­tion is be­ing as­sault­ed dai­ly by the dis­ease of po­lit­i­cal, eth­nic and re­gion­al sec­tar­i­an­ism. We sure­ly do not need gaso­line be­ing poured by SS­FL's in­com­pe­tent lead­er­ship on the fire of To­ba­go's sense of vic­tim­i­sa­tion by Trinidad. To­ba­go's chil­dren should have equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to be seen by na­tion­al se­lec­tors, which in­evitably leads us to the is­sue of our na­tion­al U-14 team.

T&T Fool­ers As­so­ci­a­tion

TTFA knew since De­cem­ber 2025 that the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (a pa­per or­gan­i­sa­tion en­tire­ly de­void of self-re­spect) would host its U-14 tour­na­ment in Au­gust 2026. Yet the team that rep­re­sent­ed us this week in San­to Domin­go be­gan train­ing on­ly one month ago un­der head coach Ran­dolph Boyce, who was him­self be­lat­ed­ly ap­point­ed in ear­ly Ju­ly. Boyce has pre­vi­ous­ly failed with our U-17s yet some­how still finds em­ploy­ment with our na­tion­al youth teams. He con­cur­rent­ly re­mains our na­tion­al U-17 coach.

The U-14s (like all our na­tion­al teams now) played in black and gold, not tra­di­tion­al red, white and black - a fun­da­men­tal­ly un­pa­tri­ot­ic pol­i­cy de­ci­sion. They drew 1-1 with Puer­to Ri­co, were bat­tered 4-1 by Haiti and beat French Guiana 4-1. But their colours and re­sults are not my main con­cerns. The fact that the team was se­lect­ed in se­cret, with­out even the cus­tom­ary nom­i­nal "na­tion­al screen­ing", is.

The play­ers were drawn en­tire­ly from "pres­tige" schools. Fa­ti­ma Col­lege led with sev­en, St Mary’s, Queen’s Roy­al and Hillview Col­leges had two each, and Na­pari­ma, St Bene­dict’s, St An­tho­ny’s, Trin­i­ty East and Bish­op’s High School all had one. The "non-pres­tige" schools of the coun­try, once the foun­tain of na­tion­al youth tal­ent, ap­par­ent­ly no longer serve that pur­pose. Ev­i­dent­ly, the TTFA's 2026 Na­tion­al Youth League was al­so re­dun­dant for U-14 se­lec­tion.

Ma­jor ques­tions arise in this re­gard, not the least of which con­cern the vo­ra­cious trans­fer (read "poach­ing") mar­ket for tal­ent from gov­ern­ment schools to said "pres­tige" schools; the fail­ing ecosys­tem of the for­mer, which al­lows the haem­or­rhage of tal­ent from their halls in the op­po­site di­rec­tion; and the fun­da­men­tal weak­ness­es of our youth game. But those are for an­oth­er day. Suf­fice it to say that sport is sup­posed to be a mer­i­toc­ra­cy and na­tion­al se­lec­tion should be based on fair and open com­pe­ti­tion. This was hard­ly the case with the cur­rent U-14s. I look at the de­ci­sion to ex­clude the ma­jor­i­ty of our young play­ers and won­der at the shame­less­ness of it all.

With just a few days train­ing in their legs, the boys were asked to play three match­es in three days. For all the pub­lic re­la­tions TTFA loves to gen­er­ate around its safe­guard­ing pro­gramme, it (and the rest of the dis­grace­ful Caribbean Foot­ball Union) agrees to Con­ca­caf match sched­ules that threat­en the health and safe­ty of young play­ers due to in­ad­e­quate re­cov­ery time, cu­mu­la­tive phys­i­cal fa­tigue, and an el­e­vat­ed chance of overuse or acute in­juries.

Sports sci­ence rec­om­mends a 48- to 72-hour rest pe­ri­od be­tween high-in­ten­si­ty com­pet­i­tive match­es for U-14 play­ers. This, for ex­am­ple, is ob­served in Eng­land, France and Brazil. In Mex­i­co, the pe­ri­od be­tween match­es is one week. This dan­ger­ous dai­ly match sched­ule is nor­mal in USA, how­ev­er, which is be­ing mim­ic­ked by Con­ca­caf - in nine­ty-plus de­gree heat. Boyce did not mind though, say­ing: "Three match­es in a short pe­ri­od will be a good test for them." He con­clud­ed the tour­na­ment with the usu­al plat­i­tudes, say­ing “All in all, it was a good ex­pe­ri­ence for the boys, a good ex­pe­ri­ence for the staff and a good ex­pe­ri­ence for the Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion as well."

Has the min­istry seen enough?

The Min­istry of Sport ap­pears to have seen the need for de­ci­sive lead­er­ship and ac­tion in foot­ball, though. Not on­ly has it stepped in­to the To­ba­go trav­el is­sue but it re­cent­ly an­nounced an ini­tia­tive with Mex­i­co (via its lo­cal em­bassy) to strength­en lo­cal foot­ball de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els. Re­port­ed­ly, dis­cus­sion will fo­cus on coach ed­u­ca­tion and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, and a bi­lat­er­al com­mit­tee is pro­ject­ed to de­vel­op a short-term ac­tion plan for fu­ture co­op­er­a­tion.

TTFA is part of the process but the reins are clear­ly in the Min­istry's hands. Gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments are noth­ing new in our sport. Per­haps, the most ef­fec­tive such col­lab­o­ra­tion was the bi­lat­er­al ex­change agree­ment be­tween the sports min­istries of Cu­ba and Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der which Cuban coach Is­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa came to our shores in 2004 and coached Keshorn Wal­cott to Olympic glo­ry in 2006.

If any­thing use­ful is to come of this Mex­i­can ini­tia­tive, the Min­istry must re­tain ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol of the project, in­volve on­ly prop­er sports pro­fes­sion­als in its im­ple­men­ta­tion, and es­tab­lish clear mech­a­nisms for re­port­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty where TTFA is in­volved. Oth­er­wise, fail­ure is as­sured.

As far as Pris­ons FC's threat to with­draw from the league is con­cerned, the less said the bet­ter. My on­ly re­mark is that TTFA mem­bers pre­fer to gripe rather than to act col­lec­tive­ly and de­ci­sive­ly to im­prove their sit­u­a­tion. Round and round the mul­ber­ry bush. Still, Paulo Freire al­so wrote, "With­out a min­i­mum of hope we can­not so much as start the strug­gle". So, "I must stop think­ing" about TTFA foot­ball. But I must al­so live in hope.