“The sun is de­scend­ing, the moon is ap­pear­ing and the crowd is gone, it seems like no­body is in­ter­est­ed in car­ry­ing on; when the sky is like a wood­en shack af­ter a storm, not a band or a Mas is around to per­form; all I can see is some bro­ken bot­tles so far, an in­di­ca­tion the Car­ni­val is over.”

(Lord Kitch­en­er, 1970)

A month pri­or to the start of fi­nal round qual­i­fy­ing I wrote that we should not “count our chick­ens”, that we need­ed four­teen points to qual­i­fy for World Cup 2026, and that we need­ed to take at least four points from the two match­es of the open­ing win­dow. I was cor­rect. Cu­ra­cao won the group with twelve.

But with that ster­ile home draw against Cu­ra­cao we were out of con­tention for a World Cup spot from the very first night. Then came the “off­side” de­ba­cle in Kingston. Wrong se­lec­tion. Wrong tac­tics. Wrong at­ti­tude. Still, like every­one else I went faith­ful­ly to the Hase­ly Craw­ford last Thurs­day, hop­ing for a mir­a­cle al­though my foot­ball brain told me it was all over.

No­vem­ber is not a good month for Tri­ni foot­ball.

A sub­ter­ranean anx­i­ety flowed through team prepa­ra­tions ahead of this last dou­ble­head­er. We saw it in Yorke’s ex­tra­or­di­nary re­quest for a prac­tice match against a hasti­ly as­sem­bled TTPFL “Se­lect XI” mere days be­fore meet­ing Ja­maica - an un­prece­dent­ed and risky move jus­ti­fied in part by a claim to be look­ing at TTPFL play­ers.

We felt it in his self-con­tra­dic­to­ry lamen­ta­tion at the de­lay in get­ting one un­named “Granny rule” play­er for the match­es de­spite ear­li­er as­sur­ances by TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards that the law “would open up over twen­ty play­ers out of Eu­rope, over twen­ty play­ers out of Amer­i­ca, and Cana­da where play­ers have al­ready reached out...to show in­ter­est in play­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go”. And we un­der­stood it in the ef­forts of team staff and oth­ers in the me­dia to craft a nar­ra­tive for keep­ing Yorke on board if we failed to qual­i­fy.

Pub­lic re­la­tions can­not in­ter­minably mask re­al­i­ty. Our foot­ball re­lent­less­ly cir­cles the drain pipe. With each pass­ing tour­na­ment we re­cede fur­ther from our long tra­di­tion of be­ing a top CON­CA­CAF na­tion and cer­tain­ly kings of Caribbean foot­ball.

Trinidad and To­ba­go won the Caribbean Cup eight times be­tween 1989 and 2001, mak­ing us the most suc­cess­ful team in the tour­na­ment’s his­to­ry, yet we could not ne­go­ti­ate an all-Caribbean World Cup qual­i­fy­ing group in 2025. Hope fi­nal­ly evap­o­rat­ed against a ter­ri­ble Ja­maica, has­tened by our usu­al profli­ga­cy in front of goal, our at­tack yet again be­ing less than the sum of its parts. But the re­al tragedy of this lat­est World Cup demise is not the fail­ure on the field. It is that we can­not change the TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion as eas­i­ly as we could a coach or play­er.

The an­ti-Mi­das touch

Every­thing TTFA touch­es turns to mud. It lacks com­pe­tence. It does not have a strate­gic vi­sion or plan to de­vel­op foot­ball. On the do­mes­tic front our league is poor­ly ad­min­is­tered and fi­nan­cial­ly un­sta­ble. Grass­roots, youth, women’s and na­tion­al teams’ de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes are non-ex­is­tent.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, every team the As­so­ci­a­tion fields fails, some mis­er­ably even against Caribbean op­po­si­tion, starved for as­tute lead­er­ship, prop­er plan­ning and ad­e­quate re­sources - the con­se­quence of TTFA putting all its eggs in the World Cup bas­ket and ig­nor­ing the rest.

Re­mark­ably, the As­so­ci­a­tion can­not even re­solve the “So­ca War­riors” is­sue. Still, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom held that THIS was sup­posed to be “the EAS­I­EST qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment EVER”. No Cana­da, Mex­i­co or USA? No prob­lem. Yet sec­ond place in a Caribbean qual­i­fy­ing group proved a bridge too far. This was no sur­prise to those who un­der­stand the on­go­ing sea change in Caribbean foot­ball.

Ja­maica was al­ways go­ing to be a re­al hur­dle. Since 2017 we had played them six times and won once. But it was Cu­ra­cao’s qui­et stock­pil­ing of Dutch play­ers that was the key de­vel­op­ment. They, in par­tic­u­lar, did the busi­ness at home, win­ning sev­en of the nine points on of­fer (as did Ja­maica) and mak­ing his­to­ry.

Don’t kill the mes­sen­ger

Do not kill the mes­sen­ger but I say again that pa­tri­o­tism is no sub­sti­tute for analy­sis. Dwight Yorke is an icon of our game. But we are now where rub­ber meets road and, TTFA long term sys­temic change aside, there is an im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion to be made on Yorke’s fu­ture and the di­rec­tion of the na­tion­al team.

Na­tions League 2026 and Gold Cup 2027 loom im­mi­nent. Yorke and oth­ers have ex­pressed de­sire for his re­ten­tion at the helm but should TTFA keep him be­cause “the team is mak­ing steady progress on the right path” as claimed by some (when the yard­stick is Caribbean lev­el foot­ball)? Or do they re­place him now and give a new man a year (two match­es in the March and June 2026 in­ter­na­tion­al win­dows, re­al­ly) to pre­pare for the Sep­tem­ber Na­tions League kick off and be­yond? Pub­lic opin­ion is di­vid­ed.

There is no guar­an­tee that a coach­ing ap­point­ment will be a suc­cess, but suc­cess is re­quired. Ex­cus­es and ex­pla­na­tions count for naught when on­ly re­sults mat­ter. If you take the job and ac­cept the lu­cra­tive salary - stand and de­liv­er or walk. Fail­ing to se­cure au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Ja­maica, coach Steve Mc­Claren re­signed. Yorke made his bed with his of­ten ques­tion­able team se­lec­tion, tac­tics and match man­age­ment, and there should be con­se­quences.

Yorke’s il­lus­tri­ous play­ing ca­reer out­weighed his coach­ing in­ex­pe­ri­ence to make his ap­point­ment a pop­u­lar one. We ac­cept­ed it. He got his op­por­tu­ni­ty as his peers - Clay­ton Mor­ris, Hut­son Charles, Rus­sel Lat­apy, Den­nis Lawrence, An­gus Eve, Derek King (briefly) - had theirs be­fore him. I re­ject­ed an ear­ly, un­time­ly call to re­move him af­ter the first round of match­es. But when TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards an­nounced Yorke’s ap­point­ment he made a bold pro­nounce­ment say­ing, “This project for Dwight...is about qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup.

It’s qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup or noth­ing. I know Dwight’s pride. He would not stay on with the TTFA...if he has failed to an ex­tent to his high stan­dards. (If Dwight doesn’t take T&T to the World Cup), of course, we’ll have to re­struc­ture and relook the con­tract, and that’s straight-up man­age­ment. That ap­plies to any coach in the world.” Well, Mr. Pres­i­dent, what will it be?

Yorke’s record is now: played 18, won 4, drew 8 and lost 6. Eigh­teen match­es are one SS­FL sea­son. Be­fore tak­ing the job Yorke was, and he re­mains an in­ex­pe­ri­enced coach. The team im­proved against Ja­maica some say but we set­tle for so lit­tle. Oth­er teams have im­proved more. Yorke sought to change the style of play from “An­gus­ball” but failed to im­prove com­par­a­tive re­sults.

Yorke’s five vic­to­ries came against Bermu­da, Cu­ba and St. Kitt’s. Eve’s re­sults in­clude draws with El Sal­vador, Ja­maica and Mex­i­co, and wins against Cu­ra­cao, El Sal­vador, Ja­maica, Guatemala and USA. I be­lieve TTFA now needs to re­place Yorke with an ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach. He does not have the nec­es­sary in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence and tac­ti­cal nous for the job.

If the priest could play

His­to­ry speaks. We mere­ly need to lis­ten. Re­mark­ably, we have had 24 na­tion­al coach­es in the 25 years of this cen­tu­ry.

Our cur­rent FI­FA rank­ing is 100 but our best ever rank­ing was 25 (2001) un­der Eng­lish­man Ian Porter­field. There­after, we stood at 34 (2002) un­der Brasil­ian Rene Simoes, 47 (2006) un­der Dutch­man Leo Been­hakker, and main­tained an even keel at 49 (2014-2016) un­der Trinidad-born Stephen Hart, who coached in Cana­da for twen­ty-five years be­fore join­ing us in 2013. In the last decade we have plum­met­ed as low as 103 (2020) un­der Ter­ry Fen­wick.

Yes, we have had some un­suc­cess­ful ap­point­ments - Fen­wick and Tom Saint­fi­et come to mind - but in this cen­tu­ry our best years and our in­ter­na­tion­al achieve­ments (a Caribbean ti­tle, two Gold Cup quar­ter-fi­nals and a World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion) have come un­der ex­pe­ri­enced for­eign coach­es (with the out­stand­ing ex­cep­tion of Bertille St. Clair’s 2001 Gold Cup third place). To­day, eleven of the twelve teams in­volved in the fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fy­ing had a for­eign coach.

So too do Cana­da and USA who will re­turn to the fray for WC 2030. This is the trend in CON­CA­CAF. So, if the priest could play who is we? Cu­ra­cao and Haiti have ad­vanced di­rect­ly to WC 2026 as group win­ners, while Ja­maica and Suri­name go to the in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal play­off as group run­ners up. The com­pe­ti­tion and com­par­i­son are not against our­self.

They are against teams that have by­passed us while we chat­ter about “progress” and “pos­i­tives”. We must keep up with the band, not fall ever fur­ther be­hind. Or, we could stay jam­ming still among the bro­ken bot­tles. We doh biz­ness.