Sen­a­tor David Nakhid, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, says that in or­der for the play­ers in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League to go on to achieve greater suc­cess, they must make the hard de­ci­sions now.

A for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball team cap­tain and five-time Caribbean Cup win­ner, Nakhid was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the 2025 SS­FL awards and dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion at the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce on Thurs­day.

Nakhid, who played pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Switzer­land, Bel­gium and Lebanon, first point­ed out to the gath­er­ing that com­pared to play­ers back in his time, the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion have more sup­port than any oth­er gen­er­a­tion be­fore, so all they ask of you is to be true to your­self. If you want it, don’t look for the mon­ey.

Re­flect­ing on his younger days, Nakhid re­count­ed grow­ing up dur­ing his years at sec­ondary school at St Mary’s Col­lege, where he nev­er played for the school team un­til Form Six. He was al­so an avid crick­eter as well but was re­mind­ed by a fel­low vil­lager (Bean) that he once boast­ed that he would be the first pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“But in re­ply, he was told, ‘Stop ly­ing to your­self,’ and I said, ‘What do you mean?’” stat­ed Nakhid.

He then said, “It’s easy to talk; you want to be some­thing, but the work that you’re do­ing to get where you are has to con­tin­ue,” and he told me, “Stop ly­ing to your­self and stop be­ing dis­hon­est to your­self; be true to your­self.”

A two-time ‘T&T Foot­baller of the Year’ award win­ner, Nakhid boast­ed, “All of those awards couldn’t come, and all of those suc­cess­es couldn’t come, if I had kept ly­ing to my­self that I could be a crick­eter and foot­baller at the same time. I had to choose. What he (Bean) meant is ‘choose and make a hard de­ci­sion, and we don’t like to make hard de­ci­sions any­more.’”

“That brings me to this, this SS­FL League that you now rep­re­sent. That could be; it is the foun­da­tion of every­thing that we have to build up­on in T&T this year.

He point­ed out, “If you know how this league can pre­pare all our teams for the fu­ture and all you young men and young women for your fu­ture lives, it’s this league. And that’s why I was so sur­prised when I first met your pres­i­dent (Merere Gon­za­les). I said to him, Pres­i­dent, you have a very im­por­tant role to play in the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball.”

Nakhid said, “I ex­plained to him why. Our mod­el as a coun­try is ex­act­ly like that of Bel­gium. Bel­gium, as you may know, is a phe­nom­e­non. You look at the size of the pop­u­la­tion and the play­ers they pro­duce – un­be­liev­able. And when I went from Grasshop­per FC to KSV Waregem, they told me that. They said, Don’t think be­cause you’re ex­cel­lent in the Swiss League, you’ll do well in the Bel­gian League. I took about six months of adap­ta­tion, as it was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el. Bel­gium at the time was the fourth-best league in the world, with a UE­FA co­ef­fi­cient of four, mean­ing the fourth-best league in the world. It was not easy. In­juries every­where be­cause the train­ing was hard­er, the in­ten­si­ty in the games was hard­er, every­thing. You have to adapt.”

And when I ap­proached your pres­i­dent, I said, We have to have a change in this league be­cause un­less we make the fun­da­men­tal changes in the for­mat of the sec­ondary school’s foot­ball league, we will not progress as a na­tion in foot­ball.

“This could be the mod­el. This has to be the mod­el. I’m say­ing it, hop­ing, pray­ing, and egging al­most every­one here to make the de­ci­sion to be brave enough, to be coura­geous enough, to make a change, be­cause change is not com­fort­able.

Nakhid said, “I pro­posed to the pres­i­dent, and he was very amenable that this league should go for six or sev­en months of the year. So that coach­es and play­ers can work on their game and de­vel­op it. So, I know you’re here to talk about crick­et. What about it? What about an­oth­er sport? But it’s at this point in time you have to de­cide. You have to make the hard de­ci­sion.”

He added, “I don’t know if you will go make that $1 mil­lion at 35; I don’t know about that, but I know you will live a good life. What it means is all the stake­hold­ers here, the par­ents, we have to sup­port your pres­i­dent be­cause I’ve nev­er met any­one who sits in a chair who is so open to im­prov­ing what ex­ists.”

Among the fea­ture speak­ers at the awards were Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlat, a for­mer prin­ci­pal of Na­pari­ma Col­lege; SS­FL pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les; and Col­in Mur­ray, sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion.