I was mind­ing my busi­ness a few weeks ago, when a Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) Tier 1 man called me to ask if the T&T Su­per League (TTSL) still ex­ists. It does not. He was fed up of TTPFL and want­ed to start a new league. He of­floaded a cat­a­logue of com­plaints too many to re­count. Then, a week be­fore kick-off, the league grandiose­ly an­nounced its 2025/2026 re­sump­tion in To­ba­go last week­end.

Jame­son Rigues, TTFA’s third vice pres­i­dent and one of its main il­lu­sion­ists, said at the launch, “..the TTPFL re­mains com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with clubs, im­prov­ing play­er-wel­fare, strength­en­ing gov­er­nance, and ex­pand­ing our league vis­i­bil­i­ty and com­mer­cial val­ue....When our lo­cal league strives, our na­tion­al team strives, and our peo­ple stand taller and proud­ly.”

Sounds great. But TTPFL clubs were un­pre­pared. Monies promised by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and gov­ern­ment have yet to ma­te­ri­alise. Clubs have not con­tract­ed play­ers and club own­ers are be­ing asked to bear the cost un­til State fi­nanc­ing be­comes avail­able.

Yet, from kick­off, one is left to won­der who is in charge of TTFA’s mar­ket­ing. Dur­ing the 2025 Gold Cup, TTPFL sched­uled its Cup fi­nal for the same night we played USA in the tour­na­ment open­er. Pre­dictably, Hase­ly Craw­ford (Sta­di­um) was emp­ty. Now, they kicked off the new sea­son in To­ba­go - the night be­fore To­ba­go Car­ni­val Jou­vert! How many were in Dwight Yorke (Sta­di­um), we do not know be­cause TTPFL nev­er pro­vides at­ten­dance fig­ures - even to mem­bers, al­though clubs are sup­posed to re­ceive a per­cent­age of gate re­ceipts.

The sec­ond match of the dou­ble­head­er (be­tween LH Rangers and Phoenix) was can­celled. True to form, TTFA at­tempt­ed to ob­scure the facts with a state­ment say­ing, “due to un­ex­pect­ed re­stric­tion on air­space op­er­a­tions, there were sig­nif­i­cant de­lays to flights, im­pact­ing team trav­el sched­ules and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments for our clubs to­day.”

You are for­giv­en if you sur­mise that mil­i­tary or­ders closed our air­space but, in fact, de­lays re­sult­ed on­ly from the log jam at Pi­ar­co caused by the crush of To­ba­go Car­ni­val go­ers. Blame TTFA, which could not see the ab­sur­di­ty of open­ing in To­ba­go on the eve of Car­ni­val, not Trump and Maduro.

The good old days

I ob­vi­ous­ly agree that we need a strong do­mes­tic league. Al­though the ma­jor­i­ty of na­tion­al team play­ers ply their trade abroad, many cut their teeth in the lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion. The pub­lic still calls TTPFL “pro league” - a huge mis­nomer be­cause it is a far cry from the now-de­funct TT Pro League (1999-2019). TTPFL play­ers are reg­is­tered as am­a­teurs. There is no min­i­mum wage. They could leave their club at any time with­out a trans­fer fee. This is not pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball.

At the apex of its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al strength and tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty, the old TT Pro League in­clud­ed four clubs - De­fence Force, Joe Pub­lic, San Juan Jabloteh and W Con­nec­tion - that were ca­pa­ble of beat­ing the Cen­tral and North Amer­i­can sides and of tak­ing a ma­jor scalp “on any giv­en Sun­day”. The old Pro League was the Mec­ca of Caribbean club foot­ball. Play­ers across the re­gion sought a TTPL con­tract. In­deed, we had play­ers from Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, as well, in the league. TTPFL does not com­pare well to this at all.

In Con­ca­caf’s Oc­to­ber leagues rank­ing, Liga MX (Mex­i­co) sits in first place, fol­lowed by MLS (USA) and the Cana­di­an and Cen­tral Amer­i­can leagues. The Caribbean leagues fill the bot­tom places, as fol­lows: Ja­maica Pre­mier League (10), Liga Do­mini­cana (11), Ligue Hai­ti­enne (12), Suri­namese Eerste Di­visie (13) and TTPFL (14). Yes, the league of Haiti, a failed state in the throes of a dead­ly gang war with the pub­lic as col­lat­er­al, is rat­ed by Con­ca­caf as bet­ter than ours.

To­day, our clubs strug­gle to sur­vive in their group in the Caribbean club cham­pi­onship. The de­par­ture of sig­nif­i­cant pri­vate cap­i­tal from club own­er­ship (Joe Pub­lic, San Juan Jabloteh and W Con­nec­tion, even North­east Stars) saw a re­turn to the dom­i­na­tion of the State-fi­nanced and -re­sourced clubs (De­fence Force, in par­tic­u­lar) that the pri­vate clubs in­ter­rupt­ed in the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.

TTPFL an­nounced at its launch that it has se­cured more spon­sor­ship - a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment. Yet, I make bold to say that a re­turn to the best days of do­mes­tic club foot­ball, and the mean­ing­ful resur­gence of our top clubs in­to Con­fed­er­a­tion-lev­el com­pe­ti­tions can­not be premised on FI­FA and State fi­nanc­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in to­day’s eco­nom­ic land­scape. Ma­jor pri­vate in­vest­ment in clubs, their ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­fra­struc­ture and youth sys­tems, is ab­solute­ly re­quired - the TT Pro League ex­pe­ri­ence tells us this. But where it will come from is the is­sue.

Go­ing down or up?

There is one ma­jor is­sue that is a mine­field for the league. Fi­nal­ly, af­ter three sea­sons, we will have rel­e­ga­tion and pro­mo­tion be­tween its two Tiers.

Act­ing League chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Yale An­toine told the me­dia at the launch, “The aim is to have pro­mo­tion and de­mo­tion start at the end of this sea­son for Tier 1 and Tier 2. Most like­ly, it will be the bot­tom one or two teams go­ing down. That will be based on the per­for­mance of the teams and the strength of the ad­min­is­tra­tion. We’ll be look­ing at it very close­ly on a week-by-week ba­sis, so by the end of the sea­son, we’ll be ready to say yes, this team is go­ing down. It will not take long for us to de­ter­mine.”

Most like­ly? One or two? It will not take long to de­ter­mine. Why does TTPFL not have an agreed rel­e­ga­tion/pro­mo­tion for­mu­la, de­ter­mined BE­FORE the com­pe­ti­tion be­gan? The fact is that TTPFL has not dis­cussed any for­mu­la with Tier 1 clubs, nor even met with Tier 2 clubs re­gard­ing the start of their com­pe­ti­tion, nev­er mind to dis­cuss rel­e­ga­tion/pro­mo­tion.

TTPFL club li­cens­ing cri­te­ria are sup­posed to cer­ti­fy and qual­i­fy a club for par­tic­i­pa­tion (and pro­mo­tion). TTPFL ap­par­ent­ly sees its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process as un­re­li­able. An­toine’s ab­surd state­ment means that a sub­jec­tive judge­ment will be made to de­cide, not on­ly who is de­mot­ed, but al­so who is pro­mot­ed. This cre­ates a space for favouritism and ac­cu­sa­tions of bias, which would taint the league and the pro­mo­tion mech­a­nism. The truth is that if there is a prob­lem re­gard­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty of clubs, it aris­es from the ar­bi­trary and po­lit­i­cal ex­pan­sion of Tier 2 from thir­teen to twen­ty-one clubs last sea­son. This di­lut­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al qual­i­ty in­her­it­ed via TTSL clubs when FI­FA’s Oc­cu­pa­tion Com­mit­tee merged the TT Pro League (Tier 1) and TT Su­per League (Tier 2) to form TTPFL af­ter Covid. This ex­pan­sion re­duced Tier 2 to the lev­el of a glo­ri­fied TTFA re­gion­al league - typ­i­cal TTFA non­sense, but pol­i­tics has now cre­at­ed the prob­lem of qual­i­ty con­trol, which club li­cens­ing ev­i­dent­ly has not ad­dressed.

Long and wind­ing road ahead

TTPFL has an­nounced some good de­vel­op­ments to be­gin the new sea­son. It has more spon­sors. It in­tends to bring it­self in­to line with the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar. And pro­mo­tion/rel­e­ga­tion will be­gin. But the league has lit­tle prospect of se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment un­less it hones a more at­trac­tive prod­uct and mar­kets it bet­ter. In­come in mod­ern sport de­rives al­most en­tire­ly from 1) me­dia rights, 2) spon­sor­ship and en­dorse­ments, 3) mer­chan­dis­ing and li­cens­ing, and 4) gate re­ceipts, all of which ob­vi­ous­ly de­pend on the sup­port of a spend­ing pub­lic that has op­tions. TTPFL, and cer­tain­ly its mem­ber clubs, have few or none of these in­come streams. Are they struc­tured to pur­sue them? Or will our foot­ball con­tin­ue ad in­fini­tum to re­ly on the State?

MLS, which has an an­nu­al me­dia rights in­come of USD 250 mil­lion, re­leased some telling fig­ures last week. This sea­son, its view­er­ship climbed a mas­sive 29 per­cent, with an av­er­age of al­most four mil­lion week­ly live view­ers across stream­ing and lin­ear plat­forms, while match at­ten­dance sur­passed eleven mil­lion for the sec­ond straight sea­son, with its clubs av­er­ag­ing more than twen­ty thou­sand fans per match - a glob­al high. This is what TTPFL is up against.

Mean­time, a few nights ago De­fence Force, which ab­solute­ly rules TTPFL, was bru­tal­ly dis­man­tled 5-1 at home by Ja­maican side, Mt Pleas­ant, in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup semi­fi­nal. This tells us how far off the re­gion­al pace the league is. I once firm­ly be­lieved that TTFA should not be the op­er­a­tor of our elite league. No na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion runs a pro­fes­sion­al league. But the de­cline of the TT Pro League and its de­scent in­to ir­rel­e­vance co­in­cid­ed with the de­par­ture of ma­jor pri­vate cap­i­tal and the rise of the pet­ty own­er/politi­cians. Un­less the clubs demon­strate re­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al progress, we are trapped with the cur­rent sta­tus quo for the fore­see­able fu­ture. The road for­ward is long and wind­ing. Let us hope the league takes some steps in the right di­rec­tion this sea­son.