For much of the past cou­ple months, the at­ten­tion of the foot­ball world was un­der­stand­ably fixed on the World Cup.

There are those who were for­tu­nate enough to be there and to ex­pe­ri­ence again what foot­ball looks and feels like on its biggest stage. Packed sta­di­ums, sup­port­ers from every­where and an at­mos­phere that was next lev­el across sev­er­al cities. For a few weeks, al­most every­thing else in the game took a back seat.

Then the World Cup end­ed and every­one went home. That is usu­al­ly when you get a re­minder that foot­ball is much big­ger than what we see on tele­vi­sion.

Over the past three weeks or so, Trinidad and To­ba­go has had a fair amount of foot­ball tak­ing place. The CFU Club Shield was staged here, and that has been fol­lowed by the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup. At the same time, there have been match­es in the Girls’ G League, the Na­tion­al Youth League and the Women’s League (Wolf).

None of these will at­tract any­thing close to the at­ten­tion of a World Cup or na­tion­al team match­es. That’s ob­vi­ous.

But spend­ing time around these com­pe­ti­tions has made me think about an­oth­er side of the game that we don’t speak about enough.

The peo­ple foot­ball some­times for­gets

It has ac­tu­al­ly been quite a while since some of these peo­ple have had con­sis­tent foot­ball to work around.

Our men’s se­nior na­tion­al team has not played at home since No­vem­ber. Every match since then has been over­seas. The TT Pre­mier Foot­ball League al­so fin­ished in April, so there has been a no­tice­able ab­sence of that lev­el of domet­ic foot­ball that usu­al­ly cre­ates reg­u­lar work and op­por­tu­ni­ties for many peo­ple around the lo­cal game.

When there are no match­es, that ab­sence goes much fur­ther than the play­ers.

Think about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er or se­cu­ri­ty guard who de­pends on foot­ball as­sign­ments or the young per­son try­ing to build a port­fo­lio. Think about some­one who wants to get in­to broad­cast­ing and needs match­es to prac­tise. There are peo­ple try­ing to de­vel­op them­selves in event man­age­ment and oth­ers, such as match of­fi­cials, who sim­ply want a foot in the door. Cater­ers and those pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion ser­vices for sport-cen­tred groups look for­ward to match­days and com­pe­ti­tions just as much as fans.

You on­ly get bet­ter at these things by do­ing them.

That is why I think this re­cent run of foot­ball has been use­ful in ways that will nev­er ap­pear in a news­pa­per re­port.

I have seen peo­ple get­ting op­por­tu­ni­ties again. Some are ex­pe­ri­enced and have been around foot­ball for years. Oth­ers are younger and try­ing to find their way. For some, be­ing in­volved in a CFU or Con­ca­caf com­pe­ti­tion may be an­oth­er rou­tine as­sign­ment. For some­body else, it could be their first ex­po­sure to a re­gion­al tour­na­ment and their first op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­stand how things op­er­ate at an­oth­er lev­el.

That mat­ters in more ways than you might think.

We talk a lot about de­vel­op­ing play­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we should. But de­vel­op­ment in foot­ball has to go fur­ther than the 22 peo­ple on the field.

The game needs com­pe­tent peo­ple around it. A young physio, vol­un­teer or match com­mis­sion­er who gets an op­por­tu­ni­ty at the Na­tion­al Youth League to­day could even­tu­al­ly be work­ing at Con­ca­caf or FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions. Some­one as­sist­ing with match op­er­a­tions at a lo­cal tour­na­ment could even­tu­al­ly be­come a venue man­ag­er. A young ref­er­ee do­ing match­es at the grass­roots lev­el could one day be car­ry­ing a FI­FA badge.

But there has to be some­where to start, and some­times we un­der­es­ti­mate what sim­ply hav­ing foot­ball be­ing played can do.

There is al­so the eco­nom­ic side of it, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

A match might mean a lit­tle ex­tra busi­ness for some­body sell­ing food near­by. It may pro­vide paid work for se­cu­ri­ty or trans­porta­tion. A club may need some­one to as­sist with equip­ment. Some­body gets called to take pho­tographs or pro­vide a sound sys­tem.

It may not sound like much in­di­vid­u­al­ly, but put all of those peo­ple to­geth­er and you be­gin to un­der­stand that foot­ball has an econ­o­my of its own.

Then there are the peo­ple who aren’t earn­ing any­thing at all. They might be the most im­por­tant ones.

Any­one who has spent enough time around grass­roots foot­ball knows them.

There is al­ways some­body who reach­es the ground be­fore every­one else. Some­body has the keys. Some­body makes sure the uni­forms are ready. Some­body finds trans­porta­tion when the orig­i­nal arrange­ment falls through. A par­ent ends up car­ry­ing four chil­dren home be­cause an­oth­er par­ent couldn’t make it. There is usu­al­ly a coach do­ing far more than coach­ing.

These peo­ple don’t ap­pear in the match re­port. Most sup­port­ers wouldn’t know their names. And many of them ex­ist. I in­ter­act­ed with quite a few dur­ing a re­cent me­dia fo­rum with mem­bers of teams such as San Juan Jabloteh, Cresco and Beat­nix FC fol­low­ing their tri­umphs in the Na­tion­al Youth League.

Take these in­di­vid­u­als away, and plen­ty of clubs and com­pe­ti­tions would strug­gle to sur­vive for a month. That is grass­roots foot­ball.

And per­haps com­ing out of the World Cup, this is a good time to re­mind our­selves of that.

We have just watched foot­ball with enor­mous bud­gets and some of the best fa­cil­i­ties imag­in­able. Every­thing at that lev­el is de­signed to make the game look spec­tac­u­lar.Back home, the re­al­i­ty is ob­vi­ous­ly dif­fer­ent. But the pas­sion and de­sire to con­tribute aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly any less.

What may be miss­ing at times is ac­cess to the right ex­per­tise and guid­ance to help peo­ple de­vel­op their skills and be­come bet­ter at what they do.

The man mark­ing a com­mu­ni­ty field on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing may care just as deeply about the game as some­one work­ing in­side a World Cup sta­di­um. The moth­er or fa­ther mak­ing sure their kid reach­es an Un­der-15 match on time is part of foot­ball too. So is the vol­un­teer who has been at­tached to the same com­mu­ni­ty club for 20 years and prob­a­bly couldn’t tell you the last time he re­ceived any­thing for do­ing it.

That is why com­pe­ti­tions such as the Na­tion­al Youth League and the oth­er leagues be­ing played now are im­por­tant.

Of course we want good foot­ball. We want play­ers to emerge and clubs to im­prove.

But every time we put on a com­pe­ti­tion, we are al­so keep­ing peo­ple con­nect­ed to the game.

And af­ter a pe­ri­od in which there was no se­nior men’s in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball at home and the pro­fes­sion­al league has been of­fline for al­most six months, hav­ing this re­cent ac­tiv­i­ty has been re­fresh­ing.

The next chal­lenge is mak­ing sure it doesn’t dis­ap­pear again. World Cup ex­cite­ment is easy. The en­tire plan­et is watch­ing, and every­body wants to be part of it.

The re­al test for foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go comes af­ter­wards.

Can we keep peo­ple in­ter­est­ed when the big mo­ments are gone? Can we cre­ate enough ac­tiv­i­ty for some­one who wants to build a ca­reer around the sport? Can our com­mu­ni­ty clubs con­tin­ue to give young peo­ple some­where to play and some­where to be­long?

Be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly, the peo­ple who keep foot­ball go­ing aren’t al­ways the peo­ple we see hold­ing tro­phies.

Very of­ten, they are some­where out­side the pho­to­graph, al­ready think­ing about what needs to be done for the next match. To all of them who con­tin­ue to give their time and en­er­gy to keep our game go­ing, of­ten with­out recog­ni­tion or re­ward, we see you and we ap­pre­ci­ate you. God bless you all.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA me­dia of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­elled 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