An­oth­er World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cy­cle is over and we will watch WC 2026 on tele­vi­sion while oth­er Caribbean coun­tries par­tic­i­pate. We de­bate who should be na­tion­al coach, but the broad­er peren­ni­al dis­cus­sion of “what we go do” resur­faces, ad nau­se­am, in the wake of this lat­est dis­as­ter. I have con­tributed to this de­bate for 30 years and con­tin­ue now.

I am guid­ed by two premis­es, in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion one to the oth­er.

First, TTFA is a kak­istoc­ra­cy—gov­ern­ment by the least qual­i­fied, suit­able or ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple. Still, the mem­ber­ship vot­ed for them and they are in of­fice for two and a half years more.

We must de­pend on them to chart a way for­ward for our foot­ball and to un­der­take nec­es­sary ac­tion to re­alise it. Sec­ond, noth­ing unites the di­vid­ed peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go like suc­cess in sport, and most of all in foot­ball, the great­est ex­am­ple of which was the day we qual­i­fied for Ger­many 2006. The work of re­viv­ing our foot­ball is the work of na­tion­al sal­va­tion.

A prop­er Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion would al­ready be im­ple­ment­ing plans for World Cups to come over the next decade or so—the men’s tour­na­ments of 2030, 2034 and 2038, as well as the women’s tour­na­ments of 2027, 2031 and 2035, re­mem­ber­ing that women’s World Cup qual­i­fy­ing al­so serves as qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Olympic tour­na­ment (2028, 2032 and 2036). Our na­tion­al youth teams, both gen­ders, have con­sis­tent­ly failed to ne­go­ti­ate even Caribbean op­po­si­tion. This per­sis­tent fail­ure is not a mat­ter of tal­ent.

Our prob­lem is the ab­sence of prop­er plan­ning, ra­tio­nal struc­ture, and ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion in every area of TTFA life. We can­not de­pend on the for­tu­itous ar­rival of an­oth­er “gold­en gen­er­a­tion” like that which trans­port­ed us to Ger­many 2006.

We must build an ecosys­tem that grows our do­mes­tic game, iden­ti­fies the best tal­ent and pro­vides it with a struc­tured foot­ball ed­u­ca­tion and path­way in­to the elite game and our na­tion­al teams. Re­cruit­ment of for­eign-born tal­ent must be sup­ple­men­tary, not cen­tral, to our fu­ture.

Af­ter los­ing to De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go in a penal­ty shootout in the African play­off fi­nal to qual­i­fy for the FI­FA in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­offs, Nige­ria coach Er­ic Chelle said fu­ri­ous­ly, “Dur­ing all the penal­ties, the guy of Con­go did some voodoo.” Well, I am here to tell you that obeah doh beat sci­ence. Plan­ning beats both luck and sor­cery. There are ba­sic struc­tur­al el­e­ments nec­es­sary to en­sur­ing we have an “as­sem­bly line” of well-ed­u­cat­ed play­ers and that we are al­ways in the run­ning for a World Cup place at every lev­el.

In this ar­ti­cle I pro­pose some ba­sic ideas (with­in the lim­i­ta­tions of a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle) for the cre­ation of or­der, struc­ture and pre­dictabil­i­ty in our foot­ball ecosys­tem. These are found in one form or an­oth­er across the globe of se­ri­ous foot­balling na­tions. Many we pre­vi­ous­ly im­ple­ment­ed here in TTFA but aban­doned as we regress. I was a mem­ber (and tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee chair­man) of the Unit­ed TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion that was over­thrown by FI­FA af­ter two months. This is where we want­ed to go:

1. OVER­AR­CH­ING STRATE­GIC PLAN: We will not progress un­less TTFA de­fines an over­ar­ch­ing vi­sion and mis­sion that in­form its di­rec­tion, plan­ning and tar­get­ed ac­tiv­i­ty in all ar­eas of work. This is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent. Prop­er plan­ning, ad­e­quate fi­nanc­ing and ac­count­able im­ple­men­ta­tion are at the root of progress.

Cen­tral to this is plan­ning for long-term in­come gen­er­a­tion from spon­sor­ship, mer­chan­dis­ing and me­dia rights, which de­pends on mar­ket­ing ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain it. A se­ri­ous as­so­ci­a­tion can­not per­pet­u­al­ly beg for State fund­ing (even if no Min­is­ter of Sport has ever re­quired TTFA to sub­mit such a plan in or­der to re­ceive un­told mil­lions over the years).

2. STRATE­GIC TECH­NI­CAL PLAN: A guid­ing blue­print for all tech­ni­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is the sec­ond pri­or­i­ty. This in­cludes, but is not lim­it­ed to, a) grass­roots pro­grammes to grow the game, b) li­cens­ing and su­per­vi­sion of the “acad­e­mies” that now abound, c) play­er de­vel­op­ment, d) coach ed­u­ca­tion, e) com­pe­ti­tions, and f) na­tion­al teams.

This is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee, which should have over­ar­ch­ing su­per­vi­so­ry au­thor­i­ty over all tech­ni­cal mat­ters and to which all TTFA tech­ni­cal work­ers would be ac­count­able.

3. STRUC­TUR­AL RE­FORM: The as­so­ci­a­tion must be re­struc­tured in­to de­part­ments that are held ac­count­able—tech­ni­cal, na­tion­al teams, women’s foot­ball, grass­roots and youth, safe­guard­ing, etc, op­er­at­ed by spe­cialised, ex­pe­ri­enced and com­pe­tent staff.

4. TTPFL PRO­FES­SION­AL­IZA­TION: We need a more pro­fes­sion­al elite league. Mea­sures to en­sure this would in­clude: a) ex­pan­sion and pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion of league ad­min­is­tra­tion, b) re­turn­ing match­es to the com­mu­ni­ties, there­by al­low­ing clubs rev­enue-earn­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties, c) prop­er en­force­ment of club li­cens­ing re­quire­ments, d) con­tract­ing of for­eign play­ers, e) in­creas­ing prize mon­ey.

5. RE­SERVE LEAGUE (U21): This league would be a bridge for young play­ers from age group foot­ball, in­clud­ing SS­FL, to elite foot­ball. It could be used to pro­vide ex­pe­ri­ence for tal­ent­ed younger play­ers to play in a high­er age group and for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of old­er TTPFL play­ers. All TTPFL clubs should be man­dat­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this league.

6. NA­TION­AL YOUTH LEAGUE: TTFA must cre­ate a na­tion­al youth com­pe­ti­tion in­cor­po­rat­ing all clubs in three lev­els (na­tion­al tier 1 and tier 2, plus re­gion­al leagues), in­te­grat­ed via pro­mo­tion and rel­e­ga­tion.

This would op­er­ate from Feb­ru­ary to Ju­ly. TT Pro League and TT Su­per League both had youth com­pe­ti­tions and TTPFL clubs must be man­dat­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this league. SS­FL schools would ac­cess play­ers from Au­gust to De­cem­ber.

7. LINK­AGES WITH FOR­EIGN CLUBS: TTPFL clubs must pur­sue their own in­ter­ests and de­vel­op re­la­tions with for­eign pro­fes­sion­al clubs. This pro­vides many po­ten­tial ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing coach ex­changes, play­er loans, team vis­its and a path­way for lo­cal play­ers in­to for­eign leagues. In­deed, Ja­maican Pre­mier League club Mt. Pleas­ant Acad­e­my re­cent­ly ac­quired a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Bel­gian third-tier club R.A.E.C Mons for ex­act­ly this pur­pose.

8. PRI­MA­RY SCHOOLS DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME: In con­junc­tion with the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport TTFA must ini­ti­ate a grass­roots pro­gramme in these schools, as part of the cur­ricu­lum, in or­der to in­tro­duce young chil­dren to the game and to fa­cil­i­tate their ear­ly foot­ball ed­u­ca­tion. At­ten­tion must al­so be paid to im­prov­ing the Pri­ma­ry Schools Foot­ball League.

9 . NA­TION­AL TAL­ENT IDEN­TI­FI­CA­TION PRO­GRAMME: TTFA must mod­ernise its an­ti­quat­ed method­ol­o­gy of call­ing ran­dom play­ers for hap­haz­ard, one-off “screen­ing” for twen­ty min­utes on some ran­dom day. We need a pan­el of pro­fes­sion­al tal­ent scouts at na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­els, who use their eyes, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and da­ta analy­sis to iden­ti­fy, eval­u­ate, re­cruit and mon­i­tor youth tal­ent on an on­go­ing ba­sis.

A struc­tured over­seas tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme for for­eign-born play­ers must al­so be es­tab­lished. This was done un­der Unit­ed TTFA and aban­doned.

10. RE­GION­AL TECH­NI­CAL PRO­GRAMME: A per­ma­nent tech­ni­cal pro­gramme must be es­tab­lished in each TTFA re­gion, which would ap­ply a stan­dard­ised train­ing syl­labus to the tech­ni­cal/tac­ti­cal ed­u­ca­tion of the re­gion’s best U13, U15, U17 and U20 tal­ent. The re­gion­al squads would pro­vide an ac­tive, read­i­ly avail­able tal­ent pool for na­tion­al age group coach­es. As TTFA Youth De­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer I es­tab­lished this pro­gramme in 1997. It went the way of all flesh.

11. NA­TION­AL STYLE OF PLAY: A na­tion­al team is not the coach’s prop­er­ty. All teams should con­form to a na­tion­al style of play - this refers to tac­ti­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics not sys­tems of play - which TTFA should dis­sem­i­nate (via its coach ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme) in­to youth and club foot­ball. This fa­cil­i­tates in­te­gra­tion of new play­ers in­to, and move­ment of play­ers be­tween na­tion­al teams. As tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee chair­man I en­gi­neered prepa­ra­tion of a 72-page doc­u­ment on this ques­tion. It is avail­able but ig­nored.

12. NA­TION­AL YOUTH TEAMS PRO­GRAMME: Each na­tion­al youth team must have a planned in­ter­na­tion­al pro­gramme lead­ing to a fu­ture World Cup (U15s to U23s for 2030, 2034, 2038). This must in­clude an an­nu­al train­ing sched­ule and all CON­CA­CAF/CFU/FI­FA tour­na­ments, as well as friend­ly match­es.

13. OVER­SEAS IN­TERN­SHIPS: TTFA must use its in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tion­ships to se­cure in­tern­ships at pro­fes­sion­al clubs and na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions for our bright­est and best coach­es. This would al­low them to par­tic­i­pate in mod­ern train­ing in pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ments and would de­vel­op their ca­pac­i­ty to lead our foot­ball at dif­fer­ent lev­els.

Every­thing above ap­plies par­tic­u­lar­ly to the women’s game, which re­cruits young girls too late and is ne­glect­ed. It can­not be ac­com­plished im­me­di­ate­ly. Much of it does not cost a cent but the to­tal­i­ty re­quires ma­jor fi­nanc­ing. The two most im­por­tant peo­ple in TTFA, if this am­bi­tious ap­proach should be im­ple­ment­ed, are TTFA’s pres­i­dent, who must dri­ve the process, and its mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer (if that post ex­ists) who must gen­er­ate the fi­nance to re­alise it. The list is not ex­haus­tive but it em­bod­ies the AP­PROACH that is re­quired. Or we could hire Pep, pass a “Great Granny law” and try to re­cruit en­tire na­tion­al teams at every lev­el.