The fi­nal FI­FA win­dow be­fore the 2026 World Cup fi­es­ta kicks off of­fered a mind-bog­gling menu of in­ter­na­tion­al match­es - lit­er­al­ly sev­er­al dozens - with some in­ter­est­ing in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal match-ups.

FI­FA tied up its World Cup qual­i­fy­ing loose ends with Eu­ro­pean and in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play­offs; the FI­FA Se­ries, in which Trinidad and To­ba­go par­tic­i­pat­ed, was played; and there were the in­de­pen­dent­ly or­gan­ised friend­lies. Some who failed to qual­i­fy for the 2026 tour­na­ment, such as Cos­ta Ri­ca, ini­ti­at­ed a new process to­wards the 2030 World Cup with new play­ers and new staff. And then there were the prepa­ra­tion match­es played by 2026 co-hosts Cana­da, Mex­i­co and USA against Eu­ro­pean op­po­si­tion.

The Caribbean, even our best teams, did not fare well in the win­dow. In the FI­FA in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play­offs, Suri­name once again dis­played its in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er when it re­al­ly mat­ters and was elim­i­nat­ed by Bo­livia (2-1), while Ja­maica strug­gled against the stout-heart­ed am­a­teurs of New Cale­do­nia, even­tu­al­ly limp­ing to vic­to­ry 1-0, on­ly to sput­ter out 1-0 in a tor­tured, er­ror-strewn en­counter with the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go.

Like Trinidad and To­ba­go, this was sup­posed to be their "eas­i­est chance". Mean­time, in the FI­FA Se­ries - an ex­cel­lent FI­FA ini­tia­tive that al­lows in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball's un­fash­ion­able teams an ex­tra­or­di­nary in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal op­por­tu­ni­ty to min­gle - eight Caribbean teams un­der­lined the fact that, with the ex­cep­tion of the Ocea­nia Con­fed­er­a­tion, our re­gion is glob­al foot­ball's weak­est link.

Caribbean teams played 15 match­es, man­ag­ing wins on­ly against Solomon Is­lands (Ocea­nia), Amer­i­can Samoa and Guam (Asia) and Liecht­en­stein (UE­FA). No­tably, World Cup-bound Cu­ra­cao lost both its fix­tures, in­clud­ing a 5-1 ham­mer­ing from Aus­tralia.

As for Trinidad and To­ba­go, against Venezuela, Re­on Moore showed why Dwight Yorke's de­ci­sion to ig­nore him was a huge er­ror. When the South Amer­i­cans changed gear by in­sert­ing some im­por­tant play­ers in­to the match, though, we could not cope. Our de­fend­ers do not meet a for­ward of Sa­lomon Ron­don's qual­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence in the less­er leagues they play in. We have nev­er beat­en Venezuela so the loss was par for the course but the ease with which we were dis­patched (4-1) left me non­plussed.

We were bet­ter against Gabon, at­tempt­ing to be more or­gan­ised and co­he­sive on both sides of the ball, fight­ing for a 2-2 draw against ten men but even­tu­al­ly los­ing af­ter a ter­ri­ble dis­play of penal­ty kicks (2-3) by both sides. There is much to do if we are to be com­pet­i­tive in CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League play be­gin­ning in Sep­tem­ber.

French lessons

Look­ing for­ward to the World Cup, the match­es of this last pre-World Cup win­dow con­vinced me that a Eu­ro­pean team will win the 2026 ti­tle and France is my favourite to do so. There was a time when na­tion­al teams did not trav­el well be­tween con­ti­nents. From in­cep­tion, 1930 to 1958, no team won the World Cup out­side of its home con­ti­nent. Brazil, with the wun­derkind Pele among its ranks, broke that bar­ri­er with a 5-2 de­feat of the home team in the 1958 Swe­den fi­nal. It would take Eu­rope an­oth­er 52 years be­fore Spain be­came the first Eu­ro­pean team to win the World Cup out­side of Eu­rope, tak­ing home the ti­tle in South Africa (2010).

Ger­many sus­tained the Eu­ro­pean charge in Brazil (2014), be­com­ing the first Eu­ro­pean team to win the World Cup in the Amer­i­c­as. France put on a clin­ic in USA dur­ing the win­dow, im­pe­ri­ous­ly dis­miss­ing Brazil (2-1) and Colom­bia (3-1). With their lev­el and depth of tal­ent, France could field three teams in the tour­na­ment and two would make the se­mi-fi­nals. Do I ex­ag­ger­ate? They are play­ing as one once ex­pect­ed Brazil to do - with var­ied weapon­ry, ruth­less con­fi­dence, flair and guile - and they are clear­ly com­fort­able in the US en­vi­ron­ment where their star ap­peal en­sures ami­able crowds. Woe be un­to all op­po­nents.

At South Africa 2010, France im­plod­ed with a play­er in­sur­rec­tion against coach Ray­mond Domenech, lead­ing to a gov­ern­men­tal en­quiry, a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the man­age­ment and struc­ture of French foot­ball, and a re­vamp­ing of the na­tion­al team that em­pha­sised im­prove­ments in both per­for­mance and pub­lic re­la­tions.

Twelve years af­ter win­ning its first world ti­tle (1998) and af­ter self-de­struc­t­ing in South Africa, France faced it­self square­ly. The re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ex­er­cise that fol­lowed pro­pelled them to their sec­ond world ti­tle in 2018 and to the 2022 fi­nal. It pro­vides a clin­i­cal les­son in the ef­fi­ca­cy of hon­est self-analy­sis and ef­fec­tive strate­gic plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion.

To­day's France team is rem­i­nis­cent of Brazil's 2006 team of glit­terati, and frankly, they look in­evitable as they ap­proach the 2026 tour­na­ment. The 2026 co-hosts, how­ev­er, will have a more dif­fi­cult time.

And 'No Kings'

Two tour­na­ment co-hosts had tol­er­a­ble re­sults in the win­dow. Cana­da drew 2-2 with Ice­land and 0-0 with Tunisia, while Mex­i­co drew 0-0 with Por­tu­gal and 1-1 with Bel­gium. They will be en­cour­aged by this, as both ob­vi­ous­ly have home ad­van­tage in the group phase of the tour­na­ment. USA, how­ev­er, was bat­tered 5-2 by Bel­gium against the back­drop of the an­ti-Trump "No Kings" protests by 8 mil­lion peo­ple in 50 US states on the same day - the largest sin­gle-day demon­stra­tion in US his­to­ry.

It was a hu­mil­i­at­ing loss for the ever am­bi­tious Unit­ed States, which has long har­boured pre­ten­sions of be­ing world cham­pi­on. Their coach, Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no, had this to say in the af­ter­math, "We can­not ar­rive with the wrong idea that we are so good, so hand­some, so well-dressed, and we are Amer­i­cans." Scathing words. He con­tin­ued, "And it's good to feel that, but if we want to win the World Cup, if we want to go to the next stage in the group...It's a good re­al­i­ty check for us." Their sub­se­quent 2-0 loss to Por­tu­gal will have done noth­ing to im­prove his at­ti­tude.

"No Kings" is an an­ti-Trump protest move­ment. It de­fends democ­ra­cy, civ­il rights and the rule of law in US gov­ern­ment and po­lit­i­cal cul­ture. Re­cent­ly, it has been buoyed by an an­ti-war eth­ic. US Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, speak­ing about the protests, said: “We will not al­low this coun­try to de­scend in­to au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism or oli­garchy."

Glob­al hu­man rights out­fit Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al stat­ed ear­li­er this week, "The US – where three-quar­ters of World Cup match­es will be held – is fac­ing a ‘hu­man rights emer­gency’ and a recog­nis­able pat­tern of au­thor­i­tar­i­an prac­tices." USA's prob­lems may not be lim­it­ed to the foot­ball pitch come June. An­ti-Trump protests in World Cup host cities will not sur­prise, as peo­ple may seize the op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the world stage and fo­cus.

The "No Kings" and Pochet­ti­no eras have par­al­lel life lines, hav­ing be­gun mere months apart. While the for­mer will on­ly grow, fu­elled by USA's ripen­ing in­ter­nal con­tra­dic­tions, I be­lieve the lat­ter is head­ed for the rocks and will end in mis­sion fail­ure. I do not see USA sur­viv­ing the Round of 32 knock­out stage. And what of Cana­da and Mex­i­co? They may very well share the same fate. The Eu­ro­peans are com­ing.

Post script: All bets off

We are told FI­FA sneaked in­to the coun­try last week to in­ves­ti­gate match fix­ing in the TTPFL (T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League). We are al­so told the prob­lem is not new but TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) "swept it un­der the car­pet". For­mer na­tion­al play­er Car­lyle Mitchell has re­spond­ed to this de­vel­op­ment, say­ing, "I am against match fix­ing, be­cause it's a dis­grace to the game, you un­der­stand? But when you want to pay play­ers that type of (small) mon­ey, and then you don't even give them any mon­ey on time, you leave them with no oth­er choice but to find some­one else to give, to get mon­ey."

All I will say is this: Match fix­ing is fun­da­men­tal­ly a moral is­sue - more than fi­nan­cial or even le­gal. It is a metaphor for the cor­rup­tion of mod­ern so­ci­ety. The le­gal­i­sa­tion of gam­bling by gov­ern­ments chas­ing tax rev­enue has mag­ni­fied the prob­lem and it af­fects many sports. In the Unit­ed States, MLS (Ma­jor League Soc­cer) re­cent­ly banned two play­ers for life due to vi­o­la­tions of the league's gam­bling pol­i­cy, specif­i­cal­ly for bet­ting on their own match­es, in­clud­ing bets on yel­low cards.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Turk­ish foot­ball banned 102 top-tier club play­ers in 2025. In 2024, the Chi­nese banned 43 peo­ple for life, in­clud­ing three for­mer Chi­nese in­ter­na­tion­als and a South Ko­re­an World Cup play­er. In­ter­na­tion­al play­ers San­dro Tonali and Ni­co­lo Fa­gi­oli (Italy), We­st­on McKen­nie (USA), Ivan Toney and Kier­an Trip­pi­er (Eng­land) have all been banned for il­le­gal bet­ting. Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball is not pe­cu­liar, there­fore. But on top of all our fail­ings, this lat­est hu­mil­i­a­tion fur­ther ru­ins the im­age of our top league and the rep­u­ta­tion of our game and coun­try. Is it any won­der that delin­quent TTFA can­not se­cure se­ri­ous spon­sor­ship? And who will be held re­spon­si­ble? Ban them all!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.