With the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) roughly 75 percent complete with just the Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana legs to be played, I would have normally reviewed the performances and, in some cases, the non-performance of the various franchises.
However, someone sent me a quite stunning article a few days ago and due to the fact it is about T&T’s Soca Warriors, I believed this to be of greater interest, at least in the long term, rather than the CPL, which can be dealt with later on.
The article in question refers to T&T’s international midfielder Kevin Molino, who has retired from playing for the red, white and black. In the article, Molino says, “For me, I am done - I don’t want to be a part of this mess…I don’t want to be part of a set -up where the national coach is using the national team for his own benefit. I don’t want to be part of that. For me, he lost the locker room. One hundred percent, he lost the locker room.”
Wow! Coming from not just a national player but a stand-out one in Kevin Molino, who has represented the Soca Warriors for years and has played in the USA’s premier football division - Major League Soccer (MLS) with some degree of success. Ironically, the coach Molino is referring to is national coach Angus Eve, who gave the armband to Molino before the disappointing 2023 Concacaf Gold Cup campaign. Only last week, Eve named the US-based midfielder in a 40-man shortlist to face Curacao on Thursday evening and against El Salvador on September 10.
Molino went on to suggest that the players felt Eve was never on their side but instead was looking to sacrifice their interest for his employers - the FIFA imposed normalisation committee that still to this day runs the Trinidad & Tobago Football Association (TTFA).
Appointed in March 2020 amid heavy controversy, this normalisation committee must be one of the longest-ever committees in the world to take over a national body without fulfilling its mandate, calling an election and putting people who know about football to run the affairs of the beautiful game in this country.
According to FIFA, when it imposed this committee on the TTFA in March 2020 - “The specified period of time during which the normalisation committee will perform its functions will expire as soon as it has fulfilled all of its assigned tasks, but no later than 24 months after its members have been officially appointed by FIFA.”
It’s been 3.5 years, and this normalisation committee seems to have no end in sight.
Molino has said much more, suggesting that there was no clear strategy of play and a lack of respect for the players. Now, I am not taking what Molino has said as the gospel, but I do know (and I commented previously) about the embarrassing performance by the Soca Warriors at the Gold Cup earlier in June this year, and if my memory is still intact, I really cannot remember seeing a statement from the TTFA, through the FIFA imposed normalisation committee, about this country’s poor performance at the Gold Cup and what went wrong with the team.
Eve, perhaps quite surprisingly, has been given a strong vote of confidence by the FIFA imposed normalisation committee to continue as national coach despite the abysmal results at the Gold Cup. However, these revelations by Molino paint an entirely different picture of what is happening in local football and where this country is heading. As I have indicated, Molino is just one player, and he may very well have a grouch with the national coach for one reason or another but for him to come out publicly and talk about the alleged problems encountered by the players is indeed very sad, and for him to be brave enough and probably realising the consequences has forced him into early retirement. The ordeal may be quite reminiscent of what transpires to other athletes in various sports locally who are brazen enough to speak out against poor administrative and coaching practices.
Now, will Kevin Molino’s comments be taken seriously by the normalisation committee as losing a player of Molino’s experience before the Concacaf Nations League games cannot be good for football? The committee needs to investigate Molino’s revelations and sort this out before the games against Curacao and El Salvador. Not only do they have to look into the comments Molino made, but how do the rest of the players feel? Has anyone reached out to the players before tonight's encounter?
What is also sad about this affair is that Molino's vast experience will be lost to T&T’s football when he may still have a contribution to make, especially with youngsters coming through the ranks. Though not entirely optimistic, I am hopeful that another issue in T&T football is not swept under the carpet. Some of the decisions taken by the FIFA imposed normalisation committee are baffling at times. Their communication with the football-loving fans in this country is almost non-existent, especially as to why and how decisions are made.
So, where does T&T football go from here? How will Angus Eve address this stinging criticism by his former captain? How are the players going to look at Eve after Molino’s comments? Of course, I expect all egos to be put aside for the good of the national team all players would go out there and give 150 percent, as anything less would not end up in a positive result for the Soca Warriors.
My wish is by the time you read this, the TTFA will have reached out to Molino, Eve, and the national players to at least give them some sort of comfort that all the issues are going to be addressed so that the football fans can be proud of the performance of the Soca Warriors.
Before I close, I enquired about the opening of the Secondary Schools League and was told the league was opening with a game between the two big teams from 2022 – Fatima and St Benedict’s College – on Friday at the Hasely Crawford Stadium. But before I could put the phone down properly, I was told the game couldn’t be played on Friday because TTFA indicated the day before T&T plays Curacao at the venue. Am I missing something here? So what do they do they put it on Saturday when at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy, there are CPL fixtures carded, so the sport-loving public has to now decide either to support the school opening or to support TKR. Typically, illogical planning by those concerned.
I wonder what was the reason the game could not be played on Friday at the Hasely Crawford Stadium. Perhaps I forgot for a moment that this is Trinidad & Tobago, where simple matters are always made into complex ones.
Editor’s note: The views expressed in the preceding article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of any organisation of which he is a stakeholder.