I quote myself from a previous article ("The emperor has no clothes"), "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." I refer to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association, of course, and despite its chronic failure it has one last marble to bet on 17 April when our senior women face El Salvador at home in World Cup qualifying. A place in the 2026 CONCACAF W Championship, the qualifying tournament for the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup, will be on the line. The equation before us is simple. We must win; for El Salvador a draw will suffice. There could be no more dramatic script. The Central Americans have demonstrated clear superiority against our women in recent years, winning four of the last five encounters. So, a lot is at stake politically for TTFA, career-wise for the players and staff, and emotionally for the country, which no longer expects victories but which always hopes for positive results.
Trinidad and Tobago women's coach Damian Briggs sounded a sober note last week saying "What I try to do is to keep the big noise away from the players and the staff so that we just continue working the way we’ve worked for the last two games and just try to make the improvements as we go along." Briggs brings a decade of experience with Norwich City FC and Charlton Athletic FC academies to the job, and his level headed words are pleasantly atypical of TTFA coaches who generally prefer to make swaggering statements. Every coach lives or dies by his selections and Briggs wisely circumvented distracting controversy when questioned about the composition of his squad, saying "Certain players, I’m not going to comment on. But we just want to work with the players available, the best players that are there, and try to put together the best team possible to go into the game against El Salvador.” He evidently understands that less is often more, at least in interviews.
Demonstrating steadily improving international pedigree, El Salvador beat Ecuador 3:2 in a February friendly in Quito. La Selecta (as the Salvadoran team is known) has not idled since the March round of qualifying matches. After dismantling Barbados 13:0 they traveled to Peru to play a brace of friendlies against their South American counterparts winning 4:0 and 1:0. These are notable results. Speaking to his national media mere days ago, El Salvador coach Eric Acuña commented, “Modern football encourages a more direct style of play. It’s not about passing the ball around for the sake of passing, but about passing with purpose. We want to learn by attacking, not defending, because that’s the only way to score goals." Direct play and use of space behind the opposing defence are central to his game philosophy. He sees this approach as essential to his team's ability to compete against more developed CONCACAF rivals. In this he is correct but Acuña clearly does not understand less is more. His words let slip his tactical hand. Our local technicians are duly forewarned and forearmed. The women are our last hope in the current World Cup qualifying cycle. Our teams of both genders and all age groups have been eliminated. I will paraphrase an old adage - "Cometh the hour, cometh the women". On 17 April we will rely on them. And please TTFA, let the women wear traditional red.
<Only women need to apply>
The FIFA Council recently directed, with immediate effect, that teams participating in FIFA's women’s competitions must ensure that their head coach and/or at least one of the assistant coaches, at least one of the medical staff, and at least two officials seated on the team bench must be female. This is an extraordinary directive. One that codifies discrimination against men in the name of promoting the development of women. On a practical level, not every country or every football association is ready for this. Jill Ellis, FIFA's Chief Football Officer says, "There are simply not enough women in coaching today. We must do more to accelerate change by creating clearer pathways, expanding opportunities, and increasing the visibility for women on our sidelines". FIFA's directive evidently responds as much to cosmetics as to professional considerations. It is a typically "American" solution to a problem of minority under-representation - throw a quota at it. Quotas are the enemy of meritocracy and quality control. Their existence is used by some to minimize the value of minority achievement. And when gender becomes the main criterion for selection rather than the training, experience and record of a candidate, this facilitates a place in the sun for persons who may not be suitably qualified.
Few countries, all Western European, apply mandatory gender quotas in hiring and these are restricted to Board level appointments. In the United States, laws prohibit mandatory hiring quotas based on gender or other protected characteristics. Indeed, recent Supreme Court rulings have complicated the legal landscape for business diversity quotas. There, despite decades old diversity programmes intended to rectify historical inequities, the Court now requires that they do so without engaging in reverse discrimination, i.e. unfair treatment, based on race or gender, of members of a majority or dominant group in favor of minority or historically disadvantaged communities.
FIFA has observed an “all-female” rule for Women’s World Cups since 1995, as one part of its strategic approach to the inclusion of women in all areas of the game. Only female referees are used in women's competitions even though women officiate in the "men's" tournaments. No one has challenged this policy. At a minimum one would probably be labeled "misogynist" for doing so. More importantly, a challenge could lead to a FIFA ban. But would FIFA dare to impose a similar mandate for ethnic minority coaches, staff or referees? Would that go unopposed?
<Equal opportunity for all>
Trinidad and Tobago's Equal Opportunity Act 2000 prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, ethnicity, gender and other protected characteristics. FIFA's new mandate is patently illegal under its provisions. No local economic sector or social organization would attempt to introduce a similar directive. Were our women to qualify for the 2027 World Cup, would TTFA ignore national law by reserving a coaching position for a female coach to the exclusion of male candidates? On a practical level many national associations, confronted by underdevelopment of their domestic women's game, lack suitably qualified female personnel. Such associations, including Trinidad and Tobago, will now have to appoint unqualified local female coaches or recruit qualified foreigners at greater expense. We need more female coaches and other personnel, but the methodology of pursuing that objective matters and national law cannot be ignored even if FIFA believes itself above such legislation. The expansion and development of the women's game should proceed rationally, guided by the concrete realities and possibilities within each national association and each country's legal framework and political culture.
In another recent article ("Last train to a World Cup) I called for greater TTFA investment in the local women's game, by which I mean not only national selections, but even more so, grassroots and development programmes for girls.The truth is that TTFA has long been ahead of FIFA's directive. We have appointed female coaches at all levels since the 2016 appointment of Italian Carolina Morace - the only woman to be appointed to the job since 1991 when the senior women's team was formed. Our female coaches are few. And they have been unsuccessful in their national age group appointments. Meantime, in our domestic women's league (WOLF) only two of the seven clubs have a female coach, while the coaches in SSFL's girls' competition are overwhelmingly male. The problem is transparent. But the external imposition of a discriminatory regulation aimed at our national teams does nothing to resolve our domestic, subordinate level issues. The solution requires what I call "massification" - expansion of the number of female coaches, which broadens the cadre of elite coaches for national appointments. Effective implementation of recruitment, education and development programmes, aimed at former female players in particular, would be much more effective in the long term. The grooming of a new generation of local female coaches is essential, with emphasis on training and placing them at the grassroots, age group, schools and league levels. This would be organic growth from below, not artificial "growth" imposed from above. FIFA's vision is laudable, but one size does not fit all. All countries do not have developed football infrastructure. The promotion of women and the elevation of their status within each country's football ecosystem require individually tailored measures, not an ill-conceived global diktat.
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.
