Too much foot­ball. World Cup 2026 still lingers in mem­o­ry and we are now faced with a glut of in­ter­na­tion­al friend­lies, AF­CON qual­i­fy­ing, and Con­ca­caf and UE­FA Na­tions League match­es in­volv­ing teams seek­ing re­demp­tion from World Cup fail­ure or be­gin­ning new World Cup cy­cles with new play­ers un­der new coach­es.

And it is all so bor­ing, so nar­cot­ic. No longer are there years be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments to pique fan in­ter­est, a con­di­tion ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the con­stant sur­feit of live tele­vised foot­ball. To­day, one tour­na­ment flows in­to the oth­er in a seam­less blur of mediocre, ho­mogenised, Mam­mon-serv­ing com­pe­ti­tion.

Marce­lo Biel­sa, the icon­ic Ar­gen­tine coach, once said, “I am cer­tain that foot­ball is in a process of de­cline. More and more peo­ple are watch­ing this sport, but it is be­com­ing less and less at­trac­tive. We do not favour what made it the best sport in the world. The beau­ti­ful game is prop­er­ly los­ing its soul and be­com­ing a right chore to watch. Every­thing now is so me­chan­i­cal. Every sin­gle team wants to play this bor­ing, pa­tient pos­ses­sion stuff.” The nev­er-end­ing foot­ball has its ef­fect on play­er fit­ness too.

In the re­cent UE­FA match­es, sev­er­al big-name play­ers—Kylian Mbappe (France), Bri­an Brobbey and Cody Gakpo (Nether­lands), Kai Havertz and Ja­mal Mu­siala (Ger­many), Er­ic Gar­cia (Spain), Fran­cis­co Con­ceição (Por­tu­gal) and Alexan­der Isak (Swe­den)—all suf­fered in­juries. In our two Na­tions League match­es, sev­er­al of our play­ers were in­jured—Tyrese Spicer, Den­zil Smith, Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham and Dan­taye Gilbert.

But we love foot­ball. So we watch and we fol­low. Brazil con­tin­ued its strug­gles un­der Car­lo An­celot­ti Down Un­der, beat­ing Aus­tralia but still look­ing like it will not win an­oth­er world ti­tle for at least a mil­len­ni­um; in UE­FA, France un­der new coach Zine­dine Zi­dane’s France laboured to a colour­less 1-0 win away to Türkiye (for which he was slat­ed by the French me­dia), while Ger­many un­der Ju­r­gen Klopp was booed off the pitch af­ter a dull loss at home to low­ly Greece; and the he­roes of Cabo Verde were rude­ly brought back to earth with a 3-1 beat­ing from Mali in AF­CON qual­i­fy­ing.

Clos­er to home, five Caribbean teams—Cu­raçao, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti, Ja­maica and Suri­name—de­feat­ed Cen­tral Amer­i­can op­po­nents in the Na­tions League. Ah, the pow­er of the Caribbean di­as­po­ra. It has shift­ed the bal­ance of pow­er be­tween the two CON­CA­CAF sub-re­gions. If any­one be­lieved Caribbean teams tak­ing two of the three World Cup 2026 spots avail­able to CON­CA­CAF was a fluke, now they know—the Caribbean is no longer the poor re­la­tion “beg­ging a lodg­ing” in their rich­er fam­i­ly’s house. And the most cap­ti­vat­ing foot­ball of the FI­FA win­dow —glob­al­ly, the whole thing —was Cu­raçao’s swash­buck­ling come-from-be­hind 4-3 vic­to­ry against Cos­ta Ri­ca in San Jose af­ter be­ing 3-0 down at the half. That was sim­ply as­ton­ish­ing. Even Tico fans salut­ed the Blue Wave for the qual­i­ty of their sec­ond-half at­tack­ing play. And then, sigh, there were the So­ca War­riors.

I know noth­ing about crick­et but I watched Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) in the re­cent Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) tour­na­ment. They heaped in­dig­ni­ty up­on the na­tion on In­de­pen­dence night by los­ing to Guyana Ama­zon War­riors. (Yes, yes, I know these are for­eign-owned fran­chis­es filled with for­eign play­ers and are not na­tion­al teams, but TKR car­ries our name. Well, our nick­name). We sur­vived that, but then on Re­pub­lic night, to pour salt on our psy­cho­log­i­cal wound, the So­ca War­riors snatched de­feat from the jaws of vic­to­ry against Haiti (af­ter lead­ing 2-1 at 90th but in­cred­i­bly los­ing 2-3 to goals in 90+1’ and 90+8’) with three start­ing play­ers be­ing in­jured in­to the bar­gain. Like we blight.

His­pan­io­la—I told you

Na­tion­al coach Derek King ev­i­dent­ly learned noth­ing from his Eng­land coun­ter­part Thomas Tuchel’s huge tac­ti­cal er­ror in his team’s 2-1 World Cup semi­fi­nal loss to Ar­genti­na. The Three Li­ons were lead­ing 1-0 with five min­utes left when two goals in the space of sev­en min­utes saw a re­mark­able come­back from Ar­genti­na. The col­lapse came af­ter Tuchel made a num­ber of de­fen­sive sub­sti­tu­tions as he at­tempt­ed to hold on to the lead. Well, the les­son was lost on King in the Na­tions League match against Haiti last week, as he fell vic­tim to the same boo­by trap against an op­po­nent that was dom­i­nat­ing the pos­ses­sion sta­tis­tic but was los­ing in every­thing else—on the score­board, on chances cre­at­ed, on shots tak­en and on cor­ners won. King’s ill-con­sid­ered re­moval of key play­ers hand­ed the match to Haiti in its dy­ing em­bers. Even the Haiti play­ers could not be­lieve their un­de­served luck.

Then came the vine­gar of the 2-1 his­toric, first-time loss to Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in an emp­ty Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. No need to re­count the bit­ter de­tails. The boys tried, but the des­per­a­tion in our camp was ev­i­dent—from the re­call­ing of play­ers who could not help the team to the de­ci­sion to send Rio Car­dines in­to mid­field, a po­si­tion he has nev­er played for us.

I said in my ar­ti­cle “The road through His­pan­io­la” (04/09/2026) that “we can­not sleep on Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. Com­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Haiti, we un­der­es­ti­mate them at our per­il. Do so and our cam­paign could be over by the end of the month...We need at least four points from the first two match­es—at least a draw on the road in Ja­maica against Haiti and a must-win at home to Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic—or the dou­ble­head­er against Cu­raçao be­comes an aca­d­e­m­ic ex­er­cise.” And af­ter see­ing Cu­raçao hum­ble the Ticos on the road and dis­man­tle Nicaragua in their own house, we can ex­pect noth­ing but more grief from the Blue Wave.

I al­ways say pa­tri­o­tism is no sub­sti­tute for analy­sis. I re­mem­ber work­ing with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic fed­er­a­tion as FI­FA De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer back in the ear­ly 2000s (and Pana­ma’s too—so-called “base­ball coun­tries”). Foot­ball peo­ple in these coun­tries looked up to T&T as an un­at­tain­able stan­dard at that time. To them, our play­ers were ce­les­tial be­ings tread­ing earth.

Like Pana­ma, “the DR” was con­sid­ered easy points. To­day, (still ranked 144 by FI­FA to our 102), with pa­tient, decades-long work, they have sur­passed us. Af­ter the Haiti loss, team cap­tain Levi Gar­cia told us the play­ers must “have more faith and trust the process a bit more.” But the process is bro­ken. Ir­re­triev­ably. Our na­tion­al team has not won a match in the last ten un­der the com­bined reign of Dwight Yorke (3) and King (7)—11 if King’s ex­hi­bi­tion loss to US sec­ond di­vi­sion club Louisville City FC is in­clud­ed. There are calls for King’s head and some say Yorke should re­turn. To what end? In World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, our run was over af­ter the two open­ing match­es, as it is over now, and Yorke had two more match­es than King to fix the mess.

TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) just de­clared its loy­al­ty to Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no, nev­er mind CON­CA­CAF’s bold but hol­low an­ti-In­fan­ti­no stance. So even more FI­FA shekels are in the off­ing. Greedy Gi­an­ni is ready­ing to grant each FI­FA mem­ber US $10 mil­lion as he fights for sur­vival. That is TT $70 mil­lion, folks! Think of the fi­nan­cial car­nage in­side TTFA with that much trea­sure on the chop­ping block. In the re­al world, how­ev­er, we are falling fur­ther and fur­ther be­hind. Each pass­ing tour­na­ment shows us this. We need a new process head­ed by new peo­ple. King’s fate hangs in the bal­ance and the tour­na­ment is a mat­ter of sur­vival for us now. We are star­ing rel­e­ga­tion to Na­tions League B and elim­i­na­tion from the 2027 Gold Cup in the face.

Nev­er mind the “me­dia spe­cial­ists,” apol­o­gists and en­ablers (paid and un­paid by TTFA) who seek to con­vince us oth­er­wise. They could spin it how­ev­er they wish. The world, in­clud­ing our op­po­nents, sees we are in ter­mi­nal de­cline. The So­ca War­riors have be­come a “small is­land” team. TTFA’s mem­ber­ship should by now be in open re­bel­lion against the cat­a­stroph­ic state of af­fairs in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. They should be look­ing to clean the Augean sta­bles.

In­stead they re­main co­matose. So the ques­tion is not: Who should be coach? (And please note that, at the time of writ­ing, three Caribbean teams head League A, all led by a for­eign coach). The re­al ques­tion is: When will the own­er/vot­ers of foot­ball take the bull by the horns and in­stall a lead­er­ship that has an idea of how to turn things around? Un­til that day of sal­va­tion ar­rives, fur­ther and fur­ther down the drain pipe we go.