Some­times a World Cup cam­paign comes down to mo­ments small enough to miss in re­al time but heavy enough to haunt you when the dust set­tles. For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the 2026 qual­i­fy­ing jour­ney was ex­act­ly that: a sto­ry writ­ten in fine mar­gins, the kind of mar­gins that sep­a­rate heart­break from his­to­ry.

When we look back at this cam­paign, there’s no es­cap­ing the two games against Cu­raçao. Over both match­es, we were the team with the bet­ter spells, the bet­ter chances, and the bet­ter con­trol of the oc­ca­sion. Yet in foot­ball, “bet­ter” doesn’t al­ways trans­late in­to “points”, and those dropped mo­ments end­ed up defin­ing the ta­ble. The painful twist? Cu­raçao, the team we out­played in many ar­eas, end­ed up qual­i­fy­ing. The biggest swing came from their home win against Ja­maica… a re­sult that kept the door open for them and slammed it shut on us.

You can re­play the cam­paign from a hun­dred dif­fer­ent an­gles.

Could the fix­tures have been kinder? Ab­solute­ly.

We were the on­ly team in the en­tire com­pe­ti­tion to be hand­ed three con­sec­u­tive away games — an ab­surd stretch at such a crit­i­cal point of qual­i­fy­ing. That alone takes a toll: trav­el, re­cov­ery, un­fa­mil­iar con­di­tions, and the emo­tion­al weight of car­ry­ing ex­pec­ta­tions thou­sands of miles from home.

And maybe, just maybe, start­ing No­vem­ber with Bermu­da in­stead of Ja­maica might have giv­en the team bet­ter mo­men­tum head­ing in­to the fi­nal matchup. Our rank­ings pri­or to the World Cup qual­i­fy­ing draw did us no favours in terms of the sched­ules. These things seem small on pa­per. But mo­men­tum is re­al. Con­fi­dence is re­al. Rhythm is re­al.

At this lev­el, they can be the dif­fer­ence be­tween be­ing alive on the fi­nal night and be­ing left to watch some­one else cel­e­brate what could’ve been yours. Still, every­one says that had the eas­i­est group be­cause it was all Caribbean. Cos­ta Ri­ca and Hon­duras are al­so miss­ing out on 2026, while over­all Con­ca­caf pow­er side Ja­maica did not run away with au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion like many would have ex­pect­ed pri­or to the cam­paign.

But de­spite all of that, the truth is harsh and sim­ple: it was still down to us to be bet­ter.

This team showed re­al growth. The puz­zle pieces start­ed to align. You could see the iden­ti­ty form­ing, the struc­ture tight­en­ing, and the be­lief set­tling in. Dwight Yorke’s in­volve­ment be­gan in No­vem­ber a year ear­li­er, giv­ing the team a longer pe­ri­od to ab­sorb his ap­proach, but even then, it was a race against time. Trans­form­ing a na­tion­al team set­up takes more than a few win­dows. It re­quires con­ti­nu­ity through cy­cles, squads, and set­backs.

And that’s what makes this one sting deep­er than oth­ers, not just for fans, but for play­ers, staff, and every­one who gave their en­tire selves to this project. This wasn’t a cam­paign where we looked out of our depth or lost be­yond re­cov­ery. This one slipped through our fin­gers by inch­es, by de­ci­sions, by mo­ments. It felt reach­able. And that al­ways hurts more.

Then there’s the hu­man side of it, the part out­side the re­sults.

You watch all the re­ac­tion videos for Cu­raçao, and you feel a fa­mil­iar punch to the gut. Be­cause we lived that in 2005. But back then, our squad was filled with jour­ney­men, bril­liant pro­fes­sion­als, but men deep in­to their ca­reers. To­day, our squad is dif­fer­ent. We have play­ers in their ear­ly to mid-20s, play­ers with bright fu­tures, and play­ers who are on­ly now step­ping in­to their prime. It begs the ques­tion: what do we re­al­ly want? And how ear­ly are we will­ing to start build­ing to­ward it?

We love to fall back on the big­ger con­ver­sa­tion: the need for de­vel­op­ment, struc­ture, and long-term plan­ning. And yes, those things mat­ter. But not in the mid­dle of a qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign. You can­not be harp­ing on what hap­pens at pri­ma­ry school or un­der-15 lev­el when the se­nior team is al­ready deep in the bat­tle. That has been our com­fort ex­cuse for decades. Some­times it’s a way to avoid ad­mit­ting the truth.

Let’s be re­al. Cu­raçao didn’t qual­i­fy be­cause of some su­pe­ri­or youth sys­tem. Their youth foot­ball isn’t bet­ter than ours. Their se­nior squad wasn’t shaped by an acad­e­my struc­ture that out­class­es the Caribbean. The same goes for Suri­name and, to an ex­tent, Haiti, which has been more con­sis­tent at youth lev­els but does not pos­sess su­pe­ri­or sys­tems or re­sources to us. Do we need to fix our foun­da­tions? Ab­solute­ly. But fail­ure to qual­i­fy for se­nior World Cups is not so much a re­sult of what hap­pens or what is ab­sent at our youth lev­els. That’s an­oth­er top­ic en­tire­ly and an­oth­er re­al­i­ty we must face with hon­esty.

What will make the next few months even more dif­fi­cult is watch­ing Cu­raçao, Haiti, Pana­ma, and pos­si­bly Suri­name or Ja­maica ex­pe­ri­ence every­thing that comes with be­ing at a World Cup. The ex­po­sure. The glob­al at­ten­tion. The fi­nan­cial boost. The pride. The mo­ments play­ers nev­er for­get. It will be a harsh and con­stant re­minder of what slipped away from us, not be­cause we weren’t good enough, but be­cause we weren’t sharp enough in the right mo­ments.

The ques­tion now is whether we are strong and hon­est enough as a na­tion to let this pain shift us.

Do we want to keep stand­ing out­side the big par­ty, watch­ing the re­caps, the be­hind-the-scenes videos, and the cel­e­bra­tions, wish­ing we were on that stage? Or do we want to be part of it? VVIP or reg­u­lars?

The pos­i­tive is that the road ahead still has mean­ing­ful steps and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

We have the FI­FA Se­ries to look for­ward to, along with in­ter­na­tion­al win­dows be­gin­ning in March. There’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty of se­cur­ing friend­lies against World Cup–qual­i­fied teams, the ide­al type of op­po­si­tion to mea­sure our­selves against and ex­pose our play­ers to re­al in­ter­na­tion­al pace. Then comes prepa­ra­tion for the Na­tions League, a tour­na­ment where the mar­gins mat­ter just as much and where con­sis­ten­cy and squad depth be­come cru­cial.

This is al­so the win­dow to sharp­en every­thing around the se­nior team: im­prov­ing the do­mes­tic league, widen­ing the play­er pool, back­ing both cur­rent and in­com­ing play­ers in their club en­vi­ron­ments, and push­ing to im­prove our world rank­ings and fu­ture tour­na­ment seed­ings. These de­tails may not grab head­lines, but they change qual­i­fy­ing paths, and they can be the dif­fer­ence be­tween hope and heart­break. Ex­ist­ing sup­port from the TTFA, gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sec­tor sure­ly has its role to play go­ing for­ward.

Now at­ten­tion turns to what comes next.

What is the next step for this team?

Will Yorke be re­tained and giv­en the full run­way to shape our foot­ball in his vi­sion? Or will an­oth­er di­rec­tion be tak­en?

What­ev­er the de­ci­sion, the truth re­mains:

Fine lines cut deep. But they al­so carve the path for­ward.

Ed­it­pr’s Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­eled to over 90 coun­tries dur­ing his jour­ney in sport. “Pro Look” is his week­ly col­umn on foot­ball, sport, cul­ture and the hu­man side of the game. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com