See how everyone jumps on board now.
Three weeks ago the national women footballers arrived in the United States with no manager and almost no money, prompting their coach to use social networking in begging for assistance on their behalf.
One thing they did have though was hope, and that hope of qualifying for next year’s World Cup finals in Canada remains alive despite heartbreaking defeats to Costa Rica (on penalties) and Mexico (in extra-time) in their final two games of the CONCACAF qualifying tournament that ended eight days ago.
Now, five days away from the first leg of the decisive playoff against Ecuador in the dizzying heights of Quito – altitude 9,300 feet – everyone wants a piece of them. Last Monday night they were feted at the VIP Lounge at Piarco by personalities who either didn’t know or couldn’t care about avoiding the embarrassments in Dallas.
Some of the 13 returning players (the rest had university and club commitments) looked more than a little uncomfortable at such fanfare, given that they had lost three of five games in the competition and still had two formidable hurdles to overcome. But I suppose you can’t appear ungrateful when you’ve been promised $50,000 each by politicians scrambling desperately to make up lost ground in the public eye, especially in the countdown to a general election.
Even before they touched down in sweet T&T plans were already being finalised for training and acclimatisation in Mexico before flying on to the South American nation on Thursday ahead of Saturday afternoon’s kickoff against the Ecuadoreans. Monies owed to them from the CONCACAF tournament and allowances for the time in Mexico and Ecuador, along with match fees for the first leg have reportedly been paid.
Of course, it’s almost impossible to match the hysteria of 1989 and 2005, when the men first came within a point of getting to the big stage in Italy only to lose at home to the United States, and then made history 16 years later with victory in Bahrain to qualify for Germany 2006. Except maybe for the USA, the women’s game hasn’t yet attained the status of the men internationally, so I wouldn’t expect any sort of frenzied national reaction should they pull it off by the final whistle of the return game here on December 2.
Yesterday, the sporting headlines were about the possibility of a resolution between West Indies cricketers, the West Indies Players Association and the West Indies Cricket Board following a six-hour meeting last Friday at the Hyatt. Of course, it has to be followed closely and reported on extensively because this is what people want to know about, especially with the Indian authorities demanding US$42 million in compensation from the WICB for Dwayne Bravo and his team abandoning the tour of India just over two weeks ago.
While the circumstances are a bit different this time around — players versus their own players’ association and the angering of the most powerful organisation in the game — this is really just a continuation of a roundabout journey. Especially in light of the last ten years of almost perpetual tussles between players and administrators, I wonder how many people are really interested in the details of this latest impasse, given that all the subsequent smiles, handshakes and prime ministerial interventions are merely a precursor to the next “crisis” in West Indies cricket?
Maybe it’s a consequence of being too close too often to the subject to be at all interested in the specifics. It’s just that the sameness, the repetitiveness of it all makes it so much more frustrating than intriguing.
In the meantime, you’ve got a women’s football team on the cusp of glory and almost nothing in the way of reportage except for news that there’s a charter being organised to take 20 fans to the game on Saturday.
Even if there’s nothing newsy about training camp in Mexico (there’s always something though, except that you need reporters on the ground to get you the details...but that’s another story by itself), what about the opposition? How much of a challenge can Trinidad and Tobago expect, especially at the heights of the Ecuadorean capital?
Well, for the record, Ecuador, who hosted the South American qualification tournament in September, were whipped 4-0 by Brazil in Quito and edged 2-1 by Colombia two days later in the neighbouring district of Sangolqui (altitude 8,245 feet) before returning to the capital and rallying from a 1-2 halftime deficit to defeat Argentina 3-2 on September 28 to clinch the critical third spot (not fourth as has been widely reported) in the final standings.
On that basis alone we should be optimistic about our chances, certainly more optimistic than West Indies cricket avoiding another lap of the bacchanal roundabout in the not-too-distant future.