AI, AI!

​Aye, Aye, Aye!

​The let­ter “A” has be­come syn­ony­mous with suc­cess and pro­gres­sion over the last few weeks–even more so than be­fore.

​In school, when you ob­tained an “A” grade, there was al­ways a spe­cial joy in your heart. You couldn't wait to ac­knowl­edge it, re­port it to oth­ers, and spread the word of your achieve­ments. Now, that let­ter is in­ex­tri­ca­bly tied to AI and the pro­fu­sion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools that have cap­tured the world like noth­ing else.

​In sports, the let­ter “A” has al­so grown in in­ter­na­tion­al stature. It starts with Ar­se­nal, moves in­to Arte­ta, and now, as Ar­genti­na threat­ens more suc­cess, "A" is the new code dom­i­nat­ing the air­waves wher­ev­er you go.

​Nat­u­ral­ly, the World Cup dri­ves a mer­cu­r­ial in­ter­est in foot­ball, even among those who pre­vi­ous­ly had lit­tle knowl­edge of or care for the game. If you don't be­lieve me, take a look around your of­fice or your home. No­tice those who are claim­ing they have gone from non-fol­low­ers of sports to lovers of a par­tic­u­lar na­tion­al team. Yet, if you ask them which spe­cif­ic play­ers they sup­port and why, they will like­ly strug­gle–un­less, of course, it is one of the "Big Six" like Li­onel Mes­si, Kylian Mbappe, Cris­tiano Ronal­do, Lamine Ya­mal, Er­ling Haa­land, or Har­ry Kane, I be­lieve they will strug­gle.

​As in­ter­est has grown steadi­ly over the last few days, I am amazed at how eas­i­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens man­age to find the jer­seys of their pre­ferred coun­tries. It is al­so fas­ci­nat­ing to ob­serve the unique en­er­gy that the World Cup brings to every­one–man, woman, and child.

​Per­haps the biggest dis­ap­point­ment over the last few days is that many peo­ple with­out ac­cess to ca­ble TV can­not watch the match­es at all, as no free-to-air tele­vi­sion sta­tion is broad­cast­ing the tour­na­ment. Fur­ther­more, Rush Sports earns a mere "Fair" rat­ing at best, giv­en the fre­quent break­downs in con­nec­tion times, loss of au­dio, and even the loss of broad­cast. The dis­rup­tion dur­ing the Ar­genti­na match left many view­ers fum­ing, earn­ing the broad­cast­er a low­ly three out of 10 rat­ing at the mo­ment.

At this stage of the tour­na­ment, it is clear that de­spite all the at­tack­ing prowess on dis­play, sol­id de­fend­ing re­mains ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal—par­tic­u­lar­ly when the big guns come rum­bling. I hope that go­ing for­ward, our coach­es in T&T and across the wider Caribbean fi­nal­ly be­gin to un­der­stand that de­fen­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion is crit­i­cal to suc­cess.

​A lot of peo­ple er­ro­neous­ly con­sid­er a rigid foot­ball "style" to be es­sen­tial, but the coach­es at the World Cup are wise­ly more con­cerned with tac­ti­cal adap­ta­tion based on their op­po­nents. This lev­el of analy­sis must be­come in­te­gral to the game in our re­gion if we are ever to be con­tenders in­stead of pre­tenders.

​Over the next two weeks, we will ob­serve the mood in the coun­try in­ten­si­fy as the match­es be­come more in­tense and the knock­out phase be­gins. In­ter­est­ing­ly, while I see plen­ty of peo­ple at­tend­ing lo­cal match-view­ings in over­seas club jer­seys, I am sad­ly not see­ing any­one wear­ing T&T kits.

​Whether or not AI can ac­tu­al­ly help any­one pre­dict these re­sults re­mains high­ly de­bat­able. Af­ter all, no al­go­rithm would have ex­pect­ed Cape Verde to pull off a "T&T" style up­set over a sec­ond-ranked Span­ish team. Those of you da­ta freaks will cer­tain­ly need to re­vise your think­ing.

​If I may of­fer one piece of ad­vice: giv­en the cur­rent heat­ed con­di­tions on the field of play, the sub­sti­tute bench will be­come the de­cid­ing fac­tor in most of these close match­es. Keep that firm­ly in your thought process as you analyse and sup­port your team.

​Let me end with a word for the many Ar­genti­na doubters who em­phat­i­cal­ly told me, fol­low­ing France's re­cent suc­cess, that Mbap­pé had laid down a mark­er with his two goals.

​I wish to say to all of them: just re­mem­ber that Mes­si still holds the pen!