“You need to love pain. How­ev­er, men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, love it. You need to love it, if not, stay where you are,” a quote from the leg­endary Thier­ry Hen­ry on be­com­ing a foot­baller.

This quote ap­plies to many young foot­ballers, but over the last two months (Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber), all over the World, with World Cup qual­i­fiers dom­i­nat­ing the land­scape, play­ers are be­ing asked to tol­er­ate the PAIN of poor of­fi­ci­at­ing, with lit­tle or no re­course, it ap­pears.

All over the foot­balling world, there con­tin­ues to be both con­ster­na­tion and end­less ag­i­ta­tion with the stan­dard of of­fi­ci­at­ing. The Eng­lish Pre­mier League, La Liga and Se­rie A have week­ly en­coun­tered and re­vealed many ques­tion marks on the qual­i­ty of of­fi­cials, both those on the field, ref­er­ees, and al­so off the field, Video As­sis­tant Ref­er­ees (VAR).

So why should any­one dur­ing the cur­rent Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers 2026 be sur­prised that equal­ly dis­sat­is­fy­ing pro­nounce­ments are con­sis­tent­ly open to ma­jor ques­tions on sev­er­al de­ci­sions of the of­fi­ci­at­ing teams, lead­ing to ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy by many of the of­fi­cials se­lect­ed?

And while I am cer­tain that every coun­try will have their own con­cerns, I can on­ly ad­dress those that are so ob­vi­ous that one could be for­giv­en, on think­ing that Con­ca­caf was pick­ing on T&T for one rea­son or an­oth­er, or for one per­son or an­oth­er.

Let us ex­am­ine some of the glar­ing in­stances that must raise the hair off your neck if you are a true fan of the beau­ti­ful game –Foot­ball.

Game one - T&T was at home against Cu­ra­cao

It was an­nounced in a first ex­pe­ri­ence (or should be an ex­per­i­ment), a to­tal all-fe­male staff was se­lect­ed, led by Katie Gar­cia (Ref­er­ee) and Amairany Gar­cia (VAR of­fi­cial). Both of­fi­cials are from Mex­i­co, as were all the oth­er of­fi­cials.

Dur­ing the match, there were ob­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions where the of­fi­cials strug­gled with the pace and in­ten­si­ty of the match and as a test piece, it was a mas­sive fail­ure. The match was too much for the ladies and the home team, T&T strug­gled with "clear and ob­vi­ous" er­rors, which VAR should have cor­rect­ed. That nev­er hap­pened and they all seem to be “Learn­ing on the job”, much to the detri­ment of T&T.

There were at least two ques­tion­able, cru­cial calls, with tack­les, that ap­peared to have been eas­i­ly dis­missed with­out even a note from VAR, that went against T&T. I got the sense that the ref­er­ee was in­tent on mak­ing her­self known to the play­ers and lost sight of her role.

If ever there was ev­i­dence of the ab­ject fail­ure of this failed tem­plate, it was that it has not been used again any­where. So why, one must ask, was T&T giv­en the Guinea pig home match? And no, we are not say­ing that this “sleight of hand “by Con­ca­caf was the on­ly rea­son T&T lost a chance for a full three points, but it was cer­tain­ly a con­tribut­ing fac­tor.

Game two - T&T was away to Ja­maica

The ref­er­ee was Mario Es­co­bar (Guatemala) and the VAR of­fi­cial was Diego Ojeer (Guatemala).

And here again, de­ci­sions were in­con­sis­tent in keep­ing with world­wide best prac­tice stan­dards.

In the 16 min­utes, Ja­maica's Corey Palmer kicked out and kicked down, young T&T mid­field­er Wayne Fred­er­ick II and it was such a strong and clear­ly in­ten­tion­al kick on the thigh of Fred­er­ick, that many of the Ja­maican staff looked ner­vous as the T&T team called for ac­tion with Fred­er­ick on the ground in pain.

Ref­er­ee Es­co­bar rushed over and pulled out a yel­low card but sur­pris­ing­ly to most with foot­ball knowl­edge of dan­ger­ous and wil­ful in­tent to dam­age, that it was not the colour red. All the time, VAR of­fi­cial Ojeer did not even ask the ref­er­ee to re­view on the TV screen (this was to be­come a pat­tern in all match­es).

At the oth­er end, Levi Gar­cia scored what ap­peared to many to be a bril­liant goal af­ter cut­ting back on a de­fend­er and while the goal was giv­en by the ref­er­ee, VAR of­fi­cial Ojeer ap­peared to have awak­ened af­ter his slum­ber and said it was off­side af­ter over three min­utes of de­lay. In­ter­est­ing­ly, we nev­er saw when the pass was made where was Levi Gar­cia; in­stead, we were shown an­oth­er an­gle, which was so un­clear that it looked as if it could have gone any­way but to those of us with dis­cern­ing eye­sight, there was some­thing mis­chie­vous in this process.

Then, there was the sec­ond goal by Ja­maica, which most of us thought was off­side but the ref­er­ee and VAR ruled that when Ko­bi Hen­ry jumped for a cross, his head­er was in­ten­tion­al and meant as a back pass, which was so ridicu­lous as Hen­ry ap­peared to be at­tempt­ing to clear and the ball glanced off his head­er was in­ten­tion­al. Yet again, a VAR of­fi­cial found favour with Ja­maica. There­after, noth­ing was ever clean in de­ci­sion-mak­ing. So, in this match, it was all about the Guatemala of­fi­cials (please re­mem­ber this).

Game three - T&T was away to Bermu­da

The ref­er­ee was Julio Lu­na (Guatemala) and the VAR of­fi­cial was Ta­tiana Guz­man from Nicaragua.

Again, at the start of the match in the first few min­utes, sev­er­al de­ci­sions were so per­plex­ing that you would need a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to un­der­stand what was go­ing on.

How­ev­er, Bermu­da failed to take ad­van­tage of some of the weird de­ci­sions and T&T was able to sur­vive and win in spite of the of­fi­cial­dom con­jec­ture.

Yet again, it was a Guatemalan in charge of the whis­tle.

Game four - T&T was away to Cu­ra­cao

Ref­er­ee was Ce­sar Ramos (Mex­i­co) and VAR of­fi­cial was Guiller­mo Pacheco (Mex­i­co).

This was a game that left many shocks, as yet again we had sev­er­al de­ci­sions that ap­peared to all go­ing in favour of Cu­ra­cao. There were con­stant ag­gres­sive plays on Dante Sealy with no ac­tion from the on-field ref­er­ee, un­til fed up with the un­fair kicks, Sealy re­tal­i­at­ed and found him­self quick­ly in the Mex­i­can book.

Then, with the scores lev­el and T&T throw­ing every­thing at a be­lea­guered Cu­ra­cao, right-back Der­ron Payne was shoved to the ground with three min­utes left, which the ref­er­ee ig­nored and VAR dis­missed as well in a quick 60-sec­ond re­view, where every­one who viewed it was left be­wil­dered. In an­oth­er per­plex­ing dis­play, there was no slow-mo­tion re­play on the push in the penal­ty area.

Then, to add in­sult to in­jury, Rio Car­dines took a long throw which was put in­to the net to the joy of T&T by Levi Gar­cia, on­ly for the ref­er­ee to call the play back. Up to now, every­one is still in a quandary as to why ref­er­ee Ramos blew his whis­tle.

Af­ter all this, many could be heard say­ing that this sort of un­fair, bi­ased of­fi­ci­at­ing could not have hap­pened un­der Austin "Jack" Warn­er. There is al­so an­oth­er school of thought that there are some in Con­ca­caf who are still hurt­ing from Warn­er’s pow­er­ful reign as pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf and in­tent to re­turn the “Hurt” to T&T by en­sur­ing things are made ab­nor­mal­ly un­fair to T&T.

To avoid this, it needs to en­gage in trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, but by mak­ing avail­able match ref­er­ee re­views and per­for­mances, not­ing where there were ques­tion­able de­ci­sions, and what was the re­sult of the sup­posed ref­er­ee as­ses­sor. Just as they name a best 11 af­ter every round, I would love to see which squad/unit/group of ref­er­ees were the best for those par­tic­u­lar two match­es.

As it stands, at the mo­ment, not for the first time, it ap­pears that there are clear sig­nals that some may one the Dutch colony–Cu­ra­cao–to make it to their first World Cup as an­oth­er mar­ket­ing ploy as com­pared to one-time qual­i­fiers, T&T and Ja­maica. But I hon­est­ly hope and pray that is not the case. Let us con­clude this tour­na­ment in No­vem­ber, based on fair play and the ap­pli­ca­tion of the prop­er rules of foot­ball. I can­not tell Con­ca­caf to re­view their ap­point­ments of of­fi­cials go­ing for­ward but I can tell them that many be­sides my­self will be watch­ing and tak­ing notes.

To bor­row from Ted Lass­co: “I was al­ways told to be cu­ri­ous, not judg­men­tal, so can any­one ex­plain all of this?" Con­ca­caf over to you!