After the fanfare, fireworks and unchallenged regurgitation of syrupy public relations tripe, you think there is any prospect of a balanced assessment of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2026 World Cup qualifying chances under Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy before the team actually plays a proper football game?
By the way, I appreciate that in an environment like this, where demanding accountability in any sphere of public activity is considered an act of treason, daring to challenge the prevailing narrative—however nonsensical it appears--means immediately being branded as “negative,” as if decades of bandwaggoning positivity has gotten us anywhere closer to being a disciplined, productive and enlightened society.
So obviously the answer to the question is a resounding “No.” But you know what is the really disappointing thing? It is that people who know better, and who actually don’t need a handout, are happy to stay quiet just so they can cash in somewhere down the road.
It is that presumably independent mainstream media cannot, as yet, drag themselves away from being fanboys and fangirls of two of our finest footballers ever to ask the questions which may cause us to have a more realistic understanding of what our prospects are at claiming one of the three definite places (or two others via the playoff route) available to CONCACAF contenders for the next edition of football’s grandest occasion.
A common narrative being pushed is that with the United States, Mexico and Canada —the three highest-ranked CONCACAF nations on the FIFA global table — already inside as co-hosts, this is our best chance for a long time. Maybe, but that rose-tinted assertion ignores the reality of seven other nations (in descending order): Panama, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti and Curacao being positioned higher than Trinidad and Tobago’s 102 slot on the current FIFA rankings with an eighth, Guatemala, at 104.
Of course rankings aren’t everything and it is eminently possible for any aspirant to buck a statistical trend and perform way above what data might suggest.
This is the juncture at which performance is supposed to beat old talk, but since there was no opportunity in the latest FIFA international window — why? — to get a better sense of where the squad is at in terms of readiness, and given that fulsome endorsements by players are useless and Yorke’s optimistic utterings count for nothing unless tested in the heat of a proper contest, we can only go by a track record as something resembling a reliable gauge on what to expect.
To his credit, the man who led this country to the 1991 Youth World Cup in Portugal and then the 2006 World Cup in Germany (both historic firsts for the nation) was able to bring almost immediate success, with Latapy at his side, in his first proper managerial assignment with Macarthur FC when they lifted the Australia Cup two years ago. Since falling out with the management of that Sydney-based organisation, he has, like so many other qualified, non-white former players, remained victim of the blatant discrimination which exists at the managerial level in the world’s major football leagues.
So now that he has been placed in charge of his country’s World Cup campaign, and with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association’s short-sighted all-or-nothing attitude to qualification for 2026 (have they forgotten what transpired post-Germany 2006?), does he have the drive, the discipline and the motivational skills to transform players for whom the very basics of fitness and ball-possession have been insurmountable hurdles?
In bringing up the issue of widening eligibility rules, which will take a long time anyway notwithstanding the enthusiastic endorsement of fangirl Shamfa Cudjoe, Yorke is tacitly admitting that the available talent, whether local or foreign-based, is not up to the task.
So then, is he up to the task? Can he read the riot act if necessary, not so much to his players, but within his own technical staff and more specifically to one of his lifelong liming pardners in Latapy, someone who, despite his felicitous performances on the pitch, cannot escape a record as coach with the senior and age-group national teams and a stint in charge of the Barbados senior men’s team which ranges from mediocre to poor.
Which Yorke-Latapy tandem are we going to get, the one that rose to the challenge of Australian critics keen to find fault, or the one that was prone to off-field indiscipline and tardiness when they became comfortable with their starring roles in the national team, or the one that was largely ineffective when the coaching roles were reversed for the failed 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign?
There are enough genuine supporters and parasites masking as flag-wavers to sing a happy song. Our job, our duty, is to critique, not give standing ovations at post-game media conferences.
SOURCE: T&T Express