In last week's ar­ti­cle ("The em­per­or has no clothes") I wrote of the TTFA's dis­as­trous use of our na­tion­al teams to cre­ate il­lu­sions. I quote my­self, "The As­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly bet all its mar­bles on an in­ter­na­tion­al break­through to daz­zle the pub­lic and mask the mul­ti­tude of sins of com­mis­sion and omis­sion on the do­mes­tic front." The re­cent and pre­dictable elim­i­na­tion of our U17 teams, male and fe­male, in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing has val­i­dat­ed my words. The men's loss to Bar­ba­dos and their nar­cot­ic win against min­nows St. Mar­tin, how­ev­er, were un­fore­seen and un­for­giv­able. I am not in­ter­est­ed in the disin­gen­u­ous ex­cus­es of team coach­es, de­void of any sense of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the col­lapse of our youth teams lays at the feet of the cur­rent TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive.

More specif­i­cal­ly, our poor re­sults at every lev­el since they took of­fice in 2024 are ev­i­dence of the fail­ure of the As­so­ci­a­tion's Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee, head­ed by the Pres­i­dent, to pro­vide prop­er tech­ni­cal lead­er­ship and guid­ance; the com­plete in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the As­so­ci­a­tion's so called "elite" and "high per­for­mance" youth pro­grammes; and the in­ad­e­qua­cy of our youth com­pe­ti­tions, crit­i­cal­ly in­clud­ing the SS­FL, as a plat­form for prepar­ing both play­ers and coach­es for in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. Trinidad and To­ba­go has lost any sem­blance of re­spect in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na.

Mean­time, Cu­ba, Haiti and Ja­maica have qual­i­fied. The en­tire TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive should re­sign.

Our Men's U20 team will un­der­take World Cup qual­i­fy­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca in mere days, and in March the se­nior women will face Hon­duras in Tegu­ci­gal­pa, al­so in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, while the se­nior men will trav­el to Uzbek­istan to com­pete in the FI­FA Se­ries, an in­vi­ta­tion­al tour­na­ment that al­so in­cludes Venezuela and Gabon. Sad­ly, I ex­pect lit­tle from the teams in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing but par­tic­i­pa­tion in the FI­FA Se­ries is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty and chal­lenge for the men.

FI­FA SE­RIES 2026

FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no loves to as­so­ciate with wealth and pow­er, in the pur­suit of which he unashamed­ly em­braces and cul­ti­vates dic­ta­tors and au­thor­i­tar­i­ans. FI­FA's hyp­o­crit­i­cal mantra that pol­i­tics should not in­flu­ence foot­ball notwith­stand­ing, he cre­at­ed his con­tro­ver­sial FI­FA Peace Prize to award to a man who a huge swathe of glob­al opin­ion, in­clud­ing US opin­ion, be­lieves is si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pur­su­ing the un­en­vi­able dou­ble of world war abroad and civ­il war at home. This has caused deep em­bar­rass­ment with­in FI­FA's ranks, where op­po­si­tion to the Peace Prize be­ing do­nat­ed to Don­ald Trump cen­tres on ac­cu­sa­tions of hu­man rights abuse. Crit­ics ar­gue that the award is vul­gar pol­i­tics and dam­ages FI­FA's cred­i­bil­i­ty be­cause it ho­n­ours a leader with a con­tro­ver­sial civ­il lib­er­ties and for­eign pol­i­cy record. British hu­man rights out­fit FairSquare, has filed a com­plaint with FI­FA’s Ethics Com­mit­tee over the or­ga­ni­za­tion's de­ci­sion to award the Prize to Trump, while Hu­man Rights Watch has said, “FI­FA’s so-called peace prize is be­ing award­ed against a back­drop of vi­o­lent de­ten­tions of im­mi­grants, na­tion­al guard de­ploy­ments in US cities, and the ob­se­quious can­cel­la­tion of FI­FA’s own an­ti-racism and an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­tion cam­paigns.”

Still, since as­sum­ing of­fice in 2016 In­fan­ti­no has dou­bled FI­FA's in­come and added im­por­tant tour­na­ments to the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar - Na­tions League (first played in Eu­rope in 2018 with CON­CA­CAF join­ing in 2019), the FI­FA Se­ries (in­tro­duced in 2024) and the Club World Cup (in­au­gu­rat­ed in 2025), of which I am a huge fan. I give In­fan­ti­no cred­it for that. These tour­na­ments stream­line the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar and al­low small­er na­tions a broad va­ri­ety of op­po­nents they would not or­di­nar­i­ly meet.

AN UN­PRECE­DENT­ED CHAL­LENGE

The 2024 FI­FA Se­ries fea­tured twen­ty-four teams from dif­fer­ent con­fed­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing Guyana and Bermu­da from CON­CA­CAF, play­ing in six groups across five host coun­tries. The ex­pand­ed 2026 Se­ries will fea­ture forty-eight teams from all six FI­FA con­fed­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing eight from CON­CA­CAF, com­pet­ing in twelve groups of four teams each. Al­most a quar­ter of the glob­al foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty will par­tic­i­pate.

Our out­ing in the FI­FA Se­ries, is a chal­lenge like no oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly faced by Dwight Yorke's boys. It will be played very far from home against op­po­nents who will treat the match­es with ab­solute se­ri­ous­ness. For hosts Uzbek­istan, a World Cup 2026 par­tic­i­pant, these match­es will be among its last prepa­ra­tion ex­er­cis­es ahead of the tour­na­ment. For Gabon, ahead of AF­CON 2027 qual­i­fy­ing and com­ing on the heels of its re­cent AF­CON 2025 dis­as­ter for which the gov­ern­ment briefly sus­pend­ed the team and banned some play­ers, these match­es will pro­vide an ear­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­demp­tion. And Venezuela is not about to start los­ing to its Caribbean neigh­bours, against whom it has won three and drawn three of the six match­es played be­tween 1971 and 2019.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly ranked at 97 by FI­FA. By com­par­i­son, Uzbek­istan is ranked at 52. The White Wolves, Uzbek­istan's na­tion­al team, has play­ers who are ac­tive in var­i­ous for­eign leagues, such as Italy and Eng­land. Gabon is ranked at 86 and fin­ished as one of the four best run­ners-up in the Con­fed­er­a­tion of African Foot­ball's World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, al­low­ing them to ad­vance to the CAF play­offs for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup where they lost to Nige­ria in the play­off se­mi-fi­nals. The Pan­thers, Gabon's na­tion­al team, al­so fea­tures many play­ers who com­pete in var­i­ous Eu­ro­pean leagues. Fi­nal­ly, Venezuela is ranked at 50. The eighth team in CON­MEBOL (the South Amer­i­can Con­fed­er­a­tion), the Vinot­in­to, as the team is known, missed a World Cup in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off place to Bo­livia. The Vinot­in­to has many play­ers com­pet­ing in var­i­ous for­eign leagues, in­clud­ing Spain, Italy and Brasil.

WHITH­ER YORKE?

The FI­FA Se­ries brings Dwight Yorke's stew­ard­ship as na­tion­al coach back in­to fo­cus. His con­tract ex­pires in April and if he is at the helm in March this would be his fi­nal out­ing un­der the ex­ist­ing deal. He would be hop­ing for a good show­ing and good re­sults. How­ev­er, TTFA ap­pears, as ever, con­fused on this mat­ter. As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards says there are "no plans" to ter­mi­nate the con­tract, de­spite the na­tion­al team miss­ing out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2026 World Cup, fur­ther com­ment­ing "Are we go­ing to scrap the pro­gramme that was done in the past? We are in dis­cus­sions with coach Dwight Yorke and his staff cur­rent­ly in terms of next steps." How­ev­er, Shaun Fuentes, TTFA's me­dia of­fi­cer, has said “I know there has been some lev­el of di­a­logue be­tween the TTFA and Dwight in terms of the next steps. The pres­i­dent did come out on Box­ing Day and say that he had all in­ten­tion of hope­ful­ly con­tin­u­ing this pro­gramme with Dwight’s in­volve­ment, but it is left to be seen what can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed."

Af­ter the failed World cam­paign I called for Yorke’s re­place­ment by an ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach be­cause of mediocre per­for­mance and re­sults. Yorke’s anaemic record is now: played 18, won 4, drew 8 and lost 6. I hold to my po­si­tion. Dis­ap­point­ing World Cup qual­i­fy­ing re­sults have forced coach­ing changes in Ja­maica and Suri­name (de­spite both qual­i­fy­ing for FI­FA's in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal play­offs), in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras and Nicaragua, yet we still pon­der stick­ing with Yorke. But we un­abashed­ly em­brace medi­oc­rity, do we not? While TTFA's Pres­i­dent is busy cozy­ing up to CON­CA­CAF's Vic­tor Mon­tagliani and play­ing sev­en-a-side with Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no our na­tion­al teams are in pro­longed cri­sis. Yet I would not be sur­prised if all the coach­es at the helm of the on­go­ing dis­as­ter were re­tained for an­oth­er cy­cle and jus­ti­fied with talk of "sta­bil­i­ty" and "progress". This would be or­tho­dox TTFA. If Yorke does make the cut for Uzbek­istan we shall soon see. And the friend­lies of the FI­FA Se­ries will soon be be­hind us. Then it will be on to the se­ri­ous busi­ness of Na­tions League play in Sep­tem­ber, where we are pooled in League A with Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Mar­tinique, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Suri­name and Unit­ed States. Ob­vi­ous­ly, that line­up is much tougher than World Cup qual­i­fy­ing. And the cus­tom­ary pa­thet­ic medi­oc­rity will not suf­fice.

POST SCRIPT: GOD BLESS AMER­I­CA

Bad Bun­ny's po­tent mix of art and pol­i­tics in his Su­per Bowl 2026 half-time show hit US and glob­al au­di­ences with Hur­ri­cane Maria force and ef­fect. It was a thing of beau­ty. His pro­found­ly an­ti-colo­nial mes­sage, wrapped in Puer­to Ri­can sal­sa mu­sic and Caribbean vibes, unit­ed all the peo­ples of Amer­i­ca - not just USA, the en­tire con­ti­nent - against threats to do­mes­tic and hemi­spher­ic peace from Green­land in the north to Tier­ra del Fuego at the bot­tom of the world. I nom­i­nate Bad Bun­ny for the 2026 FI­FA Peace Prize. His lyrics of uni­ty and re­sis­tance did more for glob­al peace in thir­teen min­utes than a life­time of speech­es by all the politi­cians of the hemi­sphere com­bined. God bless Amer­i­ca the con­ti­nent. She be­longs, not to the politi­cians, but to all her free­dom and peace lov­ing peo­ples. And as Bun­ny said to close his set, "Seguimos aqui" - "We here and we ain't go­ing nowhere" and un­for­giv­able. I am not in­ter­est­ed in the disin­gen­u­ous ex­cus­es of team coach­es, de­void of any sense of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the col­lapse of our youth teams lays at the feet of the cur­rent TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive. More specif­i­cal­ly, our poor re­sults at every lev­el since they took of­fice in 2024 are ev­i­dence of the fail­ure of the As­so­ci­a­tion's Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee, head­ed by the Pres­i­dent, to pro­vide prop­er tech­ni­cal lead­er­ship and guid­ance; the com­plete in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the As­so­ci­a­tion's so called "elite" and "high per­for­mance" youth pro­grammes; and the in­ad­e­qua­cy of our youth com­pe­ti­tions, crit­i­cal­ly in­clud­ing the SS­FL, as a plat­form for prepar­ing both play­ers and coach­es for in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. Trinidad and To­ba­go has lost any sem­blance of re­spect in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na. Mean­time, Cu­ba, Haiti and Ja­maica have qual­i­fied. The en­tire TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive should re­sign.

Our Men's U20 team will un­der­take World Cup qual­i­fy­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca in mere days, and in March the se­nior women will face Hon­duras in Tegu­ci­gal­pa, al­so in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, while the se­nior men will trav­el to Uzbek­istan to com­pete in the FI­FA Se­ries, an in­vi­ta­tion­al tour­na­ment that al­so in­cludes Venezuela and Gabon. Sad­ly, I ex­pect lit­tle from the teams in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing but par­tic­i­pa­tion in the FI­FA Se­ries is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty and chal­lenge for the men.

FI­FA SE­RIES 2026

FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no loves to as­so­ciate with wealth and pow­er, in the pur­suit of which he unashamed­ly em­braces and cul­ti­vates dic­ta­tors and au­thor­i­tar­i­ans. FI­FA's hyp­o­crit­i­cal mantra that pol­i­tics should not in­flu­ence foot­ball notwith­stand­ing, he cre­at­ed his con­tro­ver­sial FI­FA Peace Prize to award to a man who a huge swathe of glob­al opin­ion, in­clud­ing US opin­ion, be­lieves is si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pur­su­ing the un­en­vi­able dou­ble of world war abroad and civ­il war at home. This has caused deep em­bar­rass­ment with­in FI­FA's ranks, where op­po­si­tion to the Peace Prize be­ing do­nat­ed to Don­ald Trump cen­tres on ac­cu­sa­tions of hu­man rights abuse. Crit­ics ar­gue that the award is vul­gar pol­i­tics and dam­ages FI­FA's cred­i­bil­i­ty be­cause it ho­n­ours a leader with a con­tro­ver­sial civ­il lib­er­ties and for­eign pol­i­cy record. British hu­man rights out­fit FairSquare, has filed a com­plaint with FI­FA’s Ethics Com­mit­tee over the or­ga­ni­za­tion's de­ci­sion to award the Prize to Trump, while Hu­man Rights Watch has said, “FI­FA’s so-called peace prize is be­ing award­ed against a back­drop of vi­o­lent de­ten­tions of im­mi­grants, na­tion­al guard de­ploy­ments in US cities, and the ob­se­quious can­cel­la­tion of FI­FA’s own an­ti-racism and an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­tion cam­paigns.”

Still, since as­sum­ing of­fice in 2016 In­fan­ti­no has dou­bled FI­FA's in­come and added im­por­tant tour­na­ments to the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar - Na­tions League (first played in Eu­rope in 2018 with CON­CA­CAF join­ing in 2019), the FI­FA Se­ries (in­tro­duced in 2024) and the Club World Cup (in­au­gu­rat­ed in 2025), of which I am a huge fan. I give In­fan­ti­no cred­it for that. These tour­na­ments stream­line the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar and al­low small­er na­tions a broad va­ri­ety of op­po­nents they would not or­di­nar­i­ly meet.

AN UN­PRECE­DENT­ED CHAL­LENGE

The 2024 FI­FA Se­ries fea­tured twen­ty-four teams from dif­fer­ent con­fed­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing Guyana and Bermu­da from CON­CA­CAF, play­ing in six groups across five host coun­tries. The ex­pand­ed 2026 Se­ries will fea­ture forty-eight teams from all six FI­FA con­fed­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing eight from CON­CA­CAF, com­pet­ing in twelve groups of four teams each. Al­most a quar­ter of the glob­al foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty will par­tic­i­pate.

Our out­ing in the FI­FA Se­ries, is a chal­lenge like no oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly faced by Dwight Yorke's boys. It will be played very far from home against op­po­nents who will treat the match­es with ab­solute se­ri­ous­ness. For hosts Uzbek­istan, a World Cup 2026 par­tic­i­pant, these match­es will be among its last prepa­ra­tion ex­er­cis­es ahead of the tour­na­ment. For Gabon, ahead of AF­CON 2027 qual­i­fy­ing and com­ing on the heels of its re­cent AF­CON 2025 dis­as­ter for which the gov­ern­ment briefly sus­pend­ed the team and banned some play­ers, these match­es will pro­vide an ear­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­demp­tion. And Venezuela is not about to start los­ing to its Caribbean neigh­bours, against whom it has won three and drawn three of the six match­es played be­tween 1971 and 2019.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly ranked at 97 by FI­FA. By com­par­i­son, Uzbek­istan is ranked at 52. The White Wolves, Uzbek­istan's na­tion­al team, has play­ers who are ac­tive in var­i­ous for­eign leagues, such as Italy and Eng­land. Gabon is ranked at 86 and fin­ished as one of the four best run­ners-up in the Con­fed­er­a­tion of African Foot­ball's World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, al­low­ing them to ad­vance to the CAF play­offs for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup where they lost to Nige­ria in the play­off se­mi-fi­nals. The Pan­thers, Gabon's na­tion­al team, al­so fea­tures many play­ers who com­pete in var­i­ous Eu­ro­pean leagues. Fi­nal­ly, Venezuela is ranked at 50. The eighth team in CON­MEBOL (the South Amer­i­can Con­fed­er­a­tion), the Vinot­in­to, as the team is known, missed a World Cup in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off place to Bo­livia. The Vinot­in­to has many play­ers com­pet­ing in var­i­ous for­eign leagues, in­clud­ing Spain, Italy and Brasil.

WHITH­ER YORKE?

The FI­FA Se­ries brings Dwight Yorke's stew­ard­ship as na­tion­al coach back in­to fo­cus. His con­tract ex­pires in April and if he is at the helm in March this would be his fi­nal out­ing un­der the ex­ist­ing deal. He would be hop­ing for a good show­ing and good re­sults. How­ev­er, TTFA ap­pears, as ever, con­fused on this mat­ter. As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards says there are "no plans" to ter­mi­nate the con­tract, de­spite the na­tion­al team miss­ing out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2026 World Cup, fur­ther com­ment­ing "Are we go­ing to scrap the pro­gramme that was done in the past? We are in dis­cus­sions with coach Dwight Yorke and his staff cur­rent­ly in terms of next steps." How­ev­er, Shaun Fuentes, TTFA's me­dia of­fi­cer, has said “I know there has been some lev­el of di­a­logue be­tween the TTFA and Dwight in terms of the next steps. The pres­i­dent did come out on Box­ing Day and say that he had all in­ten­tion of hope­ful­ly con­tin­u­ing this pro­gramme with Dwight’s in­volve­ment, but it is left to be seen what can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed."

Af­ter the failed World cam­paign I called for Yorke’s re­place­ment by an ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach be­cause of mediocre per­for­mance and re­sults. Yorke’s anaemic record is now: played 18, won 4, drew 8 and lost 6. I hold to my po­si­tion. Dis­ap­point­ing World Cup qual­i­fy­ing re­sults have forced coach­ing changes in Ja­maica and Suri­name (de­spite both qual­i­fy­ing for FI­FA's in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal play­offs), in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras and Nicaragua, yet we still pon­der stick­ing with Yorke. But we un­abashed­ly em­brace medi­oc­rity, do we not? While TTFA's Pres­i­dent is busy cozy­ing up to CON­CA­CAF's Vic­tor Mon­tagliani and play­ing sev­en-a-side with Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no our na­tion­al teams are in pro­longed cri­sis. Yet I would not be sur­prised if all the coach­es at the helm of the on­go­ing dis­as­ter were re­tained for an­oth­er cy­cle and jus­ti­fied with talk of "sta­bil­i­ty" and "progress". This would be or­tho­dox TTFA. If Yorke does make the cut for Uzbek­istan we shall soon see. And the friend­lies of the FI­FA Se­ries will soon be be­hind us. Then it will be on to the se­ri­ous busi­ness of Na­tions League play in Sep­tem­ber, where we are pooled in League A with Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Mar­tinique, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Suri­name and Unit­ed States. Ob­vi­ous­ly, that line­up is much tougher than World Cup qual­i­fy­ing. And the cus­tom­ary pa­thet­ic medi­oc­rity will not suf­fice.

POST SCRIPT: GOD BLESS AMER­I­CA

Bad Bun­ny's po­tent mix of art and pol­i­tics in his Su­per Bowl 2026 half-time show hit US and glob­al au­di­ences with Hur­ri­cane Maria force and ef­fect. It was a thing of beau­ty. His pro­found­ly an­ti-colo­nial mes­sage, wrapped in Puer­to Ri­can sal­sa mu­sic and Caribbean vibes, unit­ed all the peo­ples of Amer­i­ca - not just USA, the en­tire con­ti­nent - against threats to do­mes­tic and hemi­spher­ic peace from Green­land in the north to Tier­ra del Fuego at the bot­tom of the world. I nom­i­nate Bad Bun­ny for the 2026 FI­FA Peace Prize. His lyrics of uni­ty and re­sis­tance did more for glob­al peace in thir­teen min­utes than a life­time of speech­es by all the politi­cians of the hemi­sphere com­bined. God bless Amer­i­ca the con­ti­nent. She be­longs, not to the politi­cians, but to all her free­dom and peace lov­ing peo­ples. And as Bun­ny said to close his set, "Seguimos aqui" - "We here and we ain't go­ing nowhere".

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