It ap­pears that the T&T foot­ball team will en­ter the fi­nal round of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers as the ‘So­ca War­riors’ af­ter all.

For­mer na­tion­al foot­baller and now Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, David Nakhid has agreed to be the ar­biter be­tween the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and vet­er­an com­men­ta­tor Sel­wyn Melville over the team’s So­ca War­riors nick­name, to en­sure that the in­ter­est of the coun­try is well served.

Nakhid’s in­volve­ment comes on the heels of a fall­out be­tween the TTFA and Melville, who failed to agree on the use of the ‘So­ca War­riors’ name. Melville, who has claimed own­er­ship of the name as its orig­i­na­tor for over 20 years, has pro­posed a five-year deal that would pay him $3 mil­lion per year. Melville al­so wants to main­tain own­er­ship of the trade­mark.

How­ev­er, the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion of­fered Melville a deal of be­tween $1.5 and $2 mil­lion for the name, an of­fer that Melville de­scribed as ridicu­lous.

Nakhid de­scribed the of­fers by both par­ties as lu­di­crous and will meet with both Melville and the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion on Thurs­day to re­solve the is­sue.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day, Nakhid said, “I have a meet­ing lined up for both par­ties on Thurs­day morn­ing, and we’re try­ing to re­solve it in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try. We are the im­par­tial ar­biter; we want to make sure that both sides are hap­py and that fair­ness and jus­tice pre­vail. Our in­ter­est is to get the na­tion­al team to the World Cup, and we want that to hap­pen with­out any hic­cups and prob­lems. Our man­date is clear; our in­ter­est is al­ways in the in­ter­est of the tax­pay­ers of T&T.”

“Both par­ties, in my view, made lu­di­crous of­fers, which is nor­mal in ne­go­ti­a­tions. Both par­ties made of­fers, which re­al­ly and tru­ly don’t make sense and don’t serve the in­ter­est of get­ting this thing done and set­tled. So, what we hope to do – I am good with both par­ties, and I have spo­ken to both par­ties, and they are very re­cep­tive to­ward find­ing a res­o­lu­tion, and we’re hop­ing to do so this week so that we can move on from this,” Nakhid ex­plained.

In 1998, Melville said he coined the nick­name So­ca War­riors while cov­er­ing a T&T men’s team en­counter against El Sal­vador in the Unit­ed States. The team was called So­ca War­riors dur­ing their suc­cess­ful 2006 FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, with so­ca artiste Max­imus Dan (now MX Prime) re­leas­ing a song called Fight­er that was ded­i­cat­ed to the squad.

In 2023, Melville said he re­ceived the cer­tifi­cate for the So­ca War­riors term at the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice (IPO) in Port-of-Spain, but Steve Dip­nar­ine, a for­mer mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of the Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny’s (TBC) said via a press re­lease on Fri­day, is al­so claim­ing to be the orig­i­na­tor of the So­ca War­riors name.

The TTFA has since start­ed a re­brand­ing cam­paign in which the pub­lic and cor­po­rate cit­i­zens have been asked to pro­pose a new nick­name for the T&T foot­ball team to re­place So­ca War­riors.

Nakhid does not be­lieve that a new name for the team will serve the coun­try’s in­ter­ests in the foot­ball trail. “The So­ca War­riors name – it would be a shame not to have it, as it rep­re­sents T&T ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. So­ca is our cul­ture; it’s our lega­cy to the world, and com­ing from Ca­lyp­so and all of that, it rep­re­sents evo­lu­tion and progress. So­ca War­riors is an ide­al name that has been around for over 20 years. We went in­to a World Cup with that name, we played sev­er­al Con­ca­caf Gold Cups with that name, and we played re­gion­al tour­na­ments with that name, so it isn’t easy to scrap and come back from scratch, but hav­ing said that, all par­ties must be rea­son­able and take in­to ac­count that the in­ter­est of the coun­try is best served if we find a res­o­lu­tion,” Nakhid said.

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke and his charges will con­test Group B of the fi­nal round of qual­i­fiers along­side re­gion­al gi­ants Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da. They will earn an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Cup if they win the group. Out­side of that, how­ev­er, the So­ca War­riors will need to be among the top two best sec­ond-place teams to go in­to an in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-off for an­oth­er chance at World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

“I am full of op­ti­mism that we can come out of the group at the top and qual­i­fy for the World Cup. I am full of op­ti­mism. We’re start­ing from scratch, so we have to for­get all the games. Whether we didn’t play well at the Gold Cup, we’re on to a new phase, so this is it. But we can’t imag­ine as a coun­try that a World Cup will take place in the Unit­ed States, and we are not there, so we’re do­ing every­thing as a gov­ern­ment and as the min­istry to make sure that our team ar­rives at the World Cup ready to play and par­tic­i­pate.”

The fi­nal round of the World Cup qual­i­fiers will be played dur­ing the FI­FA Win­dows of Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber.