“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wis­dom, it was the age of fool­ish­ness.” (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dick­ens).

This was sup­posed to be the eas­i­est qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a World Cup ever. Yet I cau­tioned weeks pri­or to kick-off that we should not “count World Cup chick­ens yet”, and with good rea­son. That sec­ond draw with Cu­raçao in Willem­stad was an­oth­er se­ri­ous blow to our World Cup dream, and now we are left hop­ing for mir­a­cles. There are some ob­vi­ous con­clu­sions about the fi­nal round of qual­i­fy­ing af­ter two win­dows: 1) Win­ners and run­ners-up will not be de­cid­ed un­til the last match; 2) Ja­maica’s loss to Cu­ra­cao en­sures they will come to Port of Spain to fight for au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion in No­vem­ber; 3) sec­ond- and third-gen­er­a­tion mem­bers of the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra are leav­ing an in­deli­ble mark on the tour­na­ment; and 4) for­eign coach­es run things (all twelve fi­nal round teams have a for­eign coach, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause Dwight Yorke, like Den­nis Lawrence and Stephen Hart be­fore him, is a for­eign coach, hav­ing cut his coach­ing teeth abroad).

Af­ter the first qual­i­fy­ing win­dow, a call was made for Yorke’s dis­missal. I re­ject­ed this as an un­time­ly dis­trac­tion. TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards de­clared, “... we move for­ward, and Coach Yorke, I tru­ly be­lieve that he has the plan and the vi­sion in terms of what he wants to do. He’s clear about it, and with the ad­di­tion­al sup­port with the third-gen­er­a­tion grand­par­ent law, it does widen the pool.” Yet, in that crunch match, a dis­or­gan­ised Cu­raçao ex­posed our re­al weak­ness – we can­not score, de­spite the fact that our coach was a world-class goalscor­er. We have tal­lied four goals in four match­es (three of those against whip­ping boys Bermu­da), and the truth is that Yorke’s tenure is now le­git­i­mate­ly on the ta­ble. The two re­main­ing qual­i­fy­ing match­es aside, we have no of­fi­cial foot­ball un­til the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League in Sep­tem­ber 2026. Yorke’s record is now: played six­teen, won four, drew six, and lost six. Medi­oc­rity. The four vic­to­ries came against min­nows St Kitts, Cu­ba and Bermu­da (FI­FA rank­ings 140, 167 and 169). I have said pre­vi­ous­ly that pa­tri­o­tism is no sub­sti­tute for analy­sis, so I will aban­don my think­ing cap and go with my heart to the sta­di­um in No­vem­ber. If the Gods favour us and we some­how man­age to qual­i­fy, Yorke will be safe, but TTFA should now be weigh­ing whether to keep Yorke on for the Na­tions League while the team is (hope­ful­ly) in friend­ly mode. Will keep­ing him on af­ter qual­i­fy­ing fail­ure do any­thing to im­prove his coach­ing acu­men or team per­for­mance?

Over the decades our best days have gen­er­al­ly been un­der for­eign coach­es – Leo Been­hakker (WC Ger­many 2006), Zo­ran Vranes (U20 WC Egypt 2009), Even Pellerud (U17 WWC Trinidad and To­ba­go 2010), Randy Wal­drum (2014 in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off for WWC Cana­da 2015), and Stephen Hart (two Gold Cup quar­ter-fi­nals 2013 and 2015). Ul­ti­mate­ly, if we fail to qual­i­fy, TTFA should re­place Yorke. We have a de­cent play­er pool by CON­CA­CAF stan­dards. Hand them to an ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach, prefer­ably a Eu­ro­pean with a sol­id in­ter­na­tion­al ré­sumé and ex­pe­ri­ence of so-called “Third World” ad­min­is­tra­tions and con­di­tions – not an Eng­lish­man sim­ply be­cause we have Eng­lish-born play­ers. The best Eng­lish clubs and their na­tion­al teams, men and women, have Eu­ro­pean coach­es any­way. TTFA would be wise to al­low the new man a year to work be­fore Na­tions League 2026.

EVE AGAIN?

“Life is like a box of choco­lates. You nev­er know what you’re go­ing to get” (For­rest Gump).

TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards re­cent­ly an­nounced the ap­point­ment of An­gus Eve to lead qual­i­fy­ing for the Women’s WC Brasil 2027 – the man he dis­missed from the men’s team in or­der to ap­point Dwight Yorke. Now, iron­i­cal­ly, has Eve re­turned to the main stage even as the lights could be dim­ming for Yorke? Giv­en how the men’s cam­paign has gone, was TTFA cor­rect to re­move Eve and ship in Yorke? Is it cor­rect now to dis­miss Yorke while Eve is re­vived? Will Yorke wish to re­main at the helm? Can Eve get his new job done? A tale of two coach­es.

TTFA’s move re­sem­bled a broke gam­bler rolling the dice one last time, des­per­ate for a win so he could tell his fam­i­ly he did not lose every­thing. Sud­den­ly, the women’s se­nior team, which had been com­plete­ly off the TTFA radar for eigh­teen months, is ac­tive. En­ter An­gus Eve, the quin­tes­sen­tial lo­cal coach, well ex­pe­ri­enced at school­boy, club and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els. His ap­point­ment di­vides pub­lic opin­ion, but I say a hearty “Good luck” to him. And to those who pre­fer some­one else, I say, “Who is bet­ter?” Un­less TTFA has the fi­nance to bring in a sol­id, ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach, Eve is the best se­lec­tion. The pool of lo­cal coach­es who are el­i­gi­ble for a na­tion­al team ap­point­ment is not large, con­trary to the opin­ion of many. So Eve it is.

There are six qual­i­fy­ing groups. Trinidad and To­ba­go is in Group F. We play each op­po­nent once – Bar­ba­dos (away) on 30 No­vem­ber, Hon­duras (away) in March 2026, and El Sal­vador (home) in April 2026. The six win­ners ad­vance to join the USA and Cana­da in the CON­CA­CAF W Cham­pi­onship in No­vem­ber 2026. The four se­mi-fi­nal­ists will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly for Brasil 2027, with two more teams qual­i­fy­ing via play­off, for a to­tal of six teams. The four se­mi-fi­nal­ists al­so qual­i­fy for the 2028 Los An­ge­les Olympics. There is a lot at stake. This is the last roll of the dice for 2025. With the lo­cal women’s league (WOLF) in­ac­tive and most play­ers idle for the last sev­er­al months, Eve has been hand­ed a dif­fi­cult as­sign­ment to face Ja­maica (FI­FA rank 40) in a friend­ly mere­ly three weeks af­ter his ap­point­ment. Hap­pi­ly, he has two months to pre­pare for Bar­ba­dos, the eas­i­est of the three op­po­nents, five for El Sal­vador and sev­en for the tough­est, Hon­duras.

Top­ping the group will be no easy task. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s women (FI­FA rank 75) have a strong record against Bar­ba­dos (FI­FA rank 159). Over the years we have lost to them on­ly once in twen­ty-three match­es. We should han­dle them. The matchup­with El Sal­vador (FI­FA rank 87) is much more even, the two teams tak­ing one match each of the two played in the last five years. How­ev­er, we have a chal­leng­ing record against Hon­duras (FI­FA rank 127), win­ning on­ly three of twen­ty-one match­es against them. Most re­cent­ly, we lost 2:1 in 2018 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing and were bat­tered 4:0 in the 2024/2025 Na­tions League A. Peo­ple com­plain about Eve’s “park the bus” tac­tics, but that just might be the tick­et against the Hon­duran. If we suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­ate the pre­lim­i­nary phase, qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Brasil 2027 from the W Cham­pi­onship would be a Her­culean achieve­ment. In the 2022 edi­tion of the tour­na­ment, we fin­ished with­out a point. But I out­pace events. First, we must see how Eve’s team fares against Bar­ba­dos in a few weeks.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRIST­MAS

Re­cent years have not been kind to Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al teams. From our U14 girls and U15 boys, up through the age group ranks in­to the se­nior teams of both gen­ders, we have suf­fered through a cat­a­logue of de­feat and dis­ap­point­ment. Since the hal­cy­on days of Ger­many 2006, our foot­ball has been in de­cline. More so, from 2015 in­to the present – from David John-Williams’ opaque and prof­li­gate tenure, through the oc­cu­pa­tion of FI­FA’s Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in­to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, which is just as im­pen­e­tra­ble as those pre­ced­ing it – that de­cline has ac­cel­er­at­ed. In 2015 our FI­FA rank­ing was 54. In 2020 we fell to 103. To­day it is 102. Our na­tion­al teams are in an on­go­ing cri­sis that no pub­lic re­la­tions or pseu­do-pro­gres­sive old talk could dis­guise.

The World Cup hori­zon looks dis­tant. Yet, I al­ways pre­fer the panoram­ic view. The cur­rent TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows the ex­ec­u­tives to do as they please and vir­tu­al­ly in­su­lates them from chal­lenge. But if they wish to serve our foot­ball, I sug­gest to these my­opic boss­es that the time is up­on them to lay plans and be­gin prepar­ing for WC 2030 (with our last U20s), WC 2034 (with our last U17s) and WC 2038 (with our cur­rent U15s). And not to for­get them, we need a na­tion­wide grass­roots de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for our lit­tle girls if we are to ever get past the need for World Cup cal­cu­la­tions that in­clude the likes of Bar­ba­dos. What should a strate­gic plan for our na­tion­al teams in­clude? I will get to that soon enough.