In 2005, I was a FI­FA De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer for CON­CA­CAF. One morn­ing in late March, the tele­phone rang. It was Jack Warn­er. He asked if I knew of Leo Been­hakker, to which I replied in the af­fir­ma­tive. I asked him, “You could get him?”

He dropped a bomb­shell. “He com­ing to­mor­row.” And so the die was cast. Af­ter three dis­as­trous match­es to start our 2005 CON­CA­CAF Hexag­o­nal qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign for Ger­many 2006 (two loss­es and a draw), we had been dis­cussing the need to re­place Bertille St Clair at the helm of the team be­fore it sunk with­out a trace.

Elite foot­ball is a cold place and loy­al­ties last as long as wins. So out went Bertille, who had tak­en us to our first World Cup (Un­der-20 Por­tu­gal 1991) with a team built around Dwight Yorke and to the 2000 Gold Cup semi­fi­nal. And in came Leo with sev­en match­es re­main­ing. To be cliché, the rest is his­to­ry. Twen­ty years lat­er, af­ter two dis­as­trous re­sults to open our 2026 fi­nal round qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, we are head­ed straight to the rocks and we don’t have the lux­u­ry of time and sev­en match­es to steady the ship with a new helms­man.

So Yorke is it. For bet­ter or worse. And our fate is se­ri­ous­ly in oth­er peo­ple’s hands now. Be­gin cal­cu­lat­ing the per­mu­ta­tions and com­bi­na­tions.

“Dey go kill we”

Opin­ions abound on Yorke’s squad and team se­lec­tion, his tac­tics, whether the team has im­proved or not, and if we will qual­i­fy. I have an opin­ion too. But I like to look at “off field” mat­ters that sur­round, in­flu­ence and give tenor to any­thing, in­clud­ing foot­ball. Let’s be­gin with T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) am­a­teur­ish or­gan­i­sa­tion and de­liv­ery of the home match against Cu­ra­cao.

Ini­tial­ly an­nounced as open­ing at 4 pm, and with hun­dreds gath­ered at their ap­point­ed gates, in­for­ma­tion fil­tered through that TTFA had changed the time to 5 pm. En­try was then fur­ther de­layed at the en­try point in­to the sta­di­um it­self be­cause, among what­ev­er rea­sons, the e-tick­et scan­ner was “not ready”. In the end, it took me 90 min­utes to move from Li­ons’ gate to my seat.

An­oth­er ma­jor is­sue was over­crowd­ing of the cov­ered stand - just as there was at the last round two match against St Kitts & Nevis. Is this be­cause the stand is over sold, or do TTFA free­bies and “VIP” guests cre­ate the over­load? What­ev­er the rea­son, it makes a mock­ery of the Fire Ser­vice and cre­ates a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion with many pa­trons left stand­ing. Does the FI­FA match Com­mis­sion­er re­port this? Have the Po­lice and Fire Ser­vices done any­thing about this? Will it be rec­ti­fied for the match­es to be played in No­vem­ber? We shall see.

Yet an­oth­er “off field” is­sue forc­ing my at­ten­tion was the TTFA’s ad­ver­tise­ment of a ‘watch par­ty” for the Ja­maica match, which in­cred­i­bly en­cour­aged par­ents to bring their lit­tle chil­dren with the punch line: “First 500 kids un­der 12 ab­solute­ly free”. What? Mer­ci­ful­ly, the event was can­celled (due to poor mar­ket­ing, ac­cord­ing to one source). So much for your much vaunt­ed child safe­guard­ing pol­i­cy. TTFA, think “nah”.

But the As­so­ci­a­tion’s am­a­teur an­tics did not af­fect on­ly the fans. The team was di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by trans­porta­tion woes ahead of both re­cent match­es. The re­port is that the team bus ar­rived at their Port-of-Spain ho­tel two hours be­fore the Cu­ra­cao match (by which time they should have al­ready been in the sta­di­um), on­ly to break down. The team fi­nal­ly ar­rived at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um with just more than one hour to kick off. Then, up­on ar­rival in Kingston ahead of last Tues­day’s key match, they had an ex­tend­ed wait for trans­porta­tion from the air­port to the ho­tel, this arrange­ment be­ing pure­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of TTFA, not the hosts.

My point is this: TTFA must up its game, over­come its ge­net­ic lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and en­sure that the rest of the cam­paign, the re­main­ing home match­es, and all team af­fairs are prop­er­ly staged, de­liv­ered and man­aged. There is no win­ning with­out a win­ning or­gan­i­sa­tion. We do not play at home again un­til No­vem­ber, and the cam­paign may be over by then, but what­ev­er one may think of Yorke and his team, they brought sup­port­ers back to the sta­di­um, wear­ing red and hope­ful. Don’t con­tin­ue mess­ing up TTFA.

“If wish­es were hors­es”

In my WCQ pre­view ar­ti­cle of Au­gust 15, I es­ti­mat­ed we need 14 points to se­cure first or sec­ond place in Group B. I said we should not count our World Cup chick­ens. An old Scot­tish proverb says: “If wish­es were hors­es, beg­gars would ride”. We may wish oth­er­wise, but Ja­maica will win Group B and qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly for World Cup 2026. We must hope to fight Cu­ra­cao for the pos­si­ble sec­ond-place play­off spot, which re­quires vic­to­ry in all four re­main­ing match­es - this from a team that won one of its last six, con­ced­ing ten goals and scor­ing twice. Some will find this state­ment pre­cip­i­tate and harsh, even un­pa­tri­ot­ic but as I said in that pre­view ar­ti­cle, “pa­tri­o­tism is no sub­sti­tute for analy­sis”.

Many peo­ple see the pas­sage of the so-called “Granny rule” (Cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Amend­ment Bill 2025) as a panacea for all our ills. With half our start­ing team al­ready for­eign-born, they ap­par­ent­ly be­lieve that we will un­earth a moth­er lode of for­eign tal­ent ready for the min­ing. In­deed, TTFA claims to have 40 play­ers lined up to wear red.

Yes, the whole­sale im­por­ta­tion of for­eign-born play­ers is help­ing Caribbean teams. The win­ning goal for Cu­ra­cao (against Bermu­da), Suri­name (against El Sal­vador) and Ja­maica (against us) was scored by a for­eign le­gion­naire. With Cu­ra­cao on our Oc­to­ber hori­zon, my sources in Willem­stad tell me that they have yet more Dutch­men to add ahead of that en­counter.

Mean­time, Ja­maica will sure­ly press Ma­son Green­wood to fi­nal­ly aban­don the Quixot­ic dream that I be­lieve he is still har­bour­ing of re­turn­ing to the Eng­land dress­ing room, and con­sent to his name be­ing added to the Ja­maica team sheet. Will the emer­gency “SOS” mea­sure of adding new play­ers at this stage be enough to keep us from the rocks in Cu­ra­cao in three weeks? We shall see, but I will say, though, that this ap­proach is the lazy man’s tick­et to in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess and is no long-term al­ter­na­tive to prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion, ef­fec­tive play­er de­vel­op­ment and build­ing the bedrock of do­mes­tic foot­ball.

“The road to hell”

Post-Ja­maica, Yorke lament­ed, “We came in here with every in­ten­tion of get­ting some­thing from the game and yet we’ve left with noth­ing to show”. Well, as they say, “the road to hell is paved with good in­ten­tions”. We sim­ply weren’t good enough in Kingston, where we had play­ers sent off the pitch to ditch the wrong colour tights (re­al U-13 stuff) and a top pro­fes­sion­al who scores at will for his club but couldn’t stay on­side for us. Yes, (Daniel) Phillips and (Kevin) Moli­no will re­turn, but we have ma­jor is­sues head­ing in­to Oc­to­ber:

1. Squad se­lec­tion. Yorke needs to re­turn some ex­pe­ri­enced heads to the team, in­clud­ing Aubrey David and Du­ane Muck­ette (who is cur­rent­ly cre­at­ing and scor­ing beau­ti­ful goals in Oman). The team lacks lead­er­ship at the back and vi­sion and goal-scor­ing abil­i­ty in mid­field.

2. In­ten­si­ty. We start too slow and take too long to get go­ing. What­ev­er he does to rec­ti­fy that, Yorke should look at his warm-up, which is far too ca­su­al, and we must play at a high­er tem­po through­out the match, all over the pitch.

3. De­fen­sive frailty. We con­ced­ed on­ly three goals in our last four match­es (one in the Gold Cup, if we don’t con­sid­er the USA match, and two against Ja­maica) but we are prone to easy in­di­vid­ual loss of de­fen­sive con­cen­tra­tion. And col­lec­tive­ly, we do not press and counter-press con­sis­tent­ly, all of which is ab­solute­ly fa­tal when we have prob­lems scor­ing.

4. Ster­ile at­tack. It is iron­ic in the ex­treme that a team coached by a for­mer world-class for­ward not on­ly can­not score one goal, but al­so looks like it does not know what to do in the fi­nal third. Long, hope­ful balls to Levi (Gar­cia) alone up front ain’t the route to vic­to­ry

Yorke has lit­tle time to fix all of that but he asked for the job. Still, we are T&T. We have more World Cup his­to­ry than all our op­po­nents com­bined. And we have no busi­ness fin­ish­ing third or last in an all-Caribbean group. The boys must play with pride in the lega­cy they in­her­it­ed and for the lega­cy they will leave to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. It is win or die in Oc­to­ber be­cause those two match­es will sink or float our boat.