Mar­tin George

"Oh gorm, I ain't go lie to tell yuh, ah lov­ing dis World Cup!," so said my neigh­bour to me this week ob­vi­ous­ly rel­ish­ing every mo­ment. I must con­fess al­so, I am quite amused and tick­led by all of it be­cause what it has cer­tain­ly start­ed out as is in­deed a World Cup of up­sets which I will re­fer to as World Cupsets. I am al­ways the one to stand up for the un­der­dog and root for the small man, the small team or the small na­tion and the mem­o­ry of be­ing in the stands, wit­ness­ing this lit­tle na­tion's first ever for­ay on the World Cup stage in Ger­many 2006 is one of my more cher­ished and favoured mem­o­ries and ex­pe­ri­ences. Thus, this time around, even though we are not there, my sup­port in a fight is al­ways for the un­der­dog. When USA stunned Eng­land with a draw in their open­ing game, that was the equiv­a­lent of a win for the US.

How could Eng­land, a team with all these big name stars and Pre­mier League he­roes even con­tem­plate to draw a match with the USA on such a mighty stage? And worse yet, how come Fabio Capel­lo hasn't re­signed as yet? What is he still do­ing there? Why isn't he leav­ing? I have heard that he has sup­port­ers in the Eng­lish FA and they may there­fore not fire him but I would hope that the Eng­lish pub­lic and the Eng­lish press have enough sense to put enough pres­sure on them to boot him out. From him to whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed–no ex­cus­es! Now don't even get me start­ed on the French team, who, ap­pear to be worse than a gag­gle of mar­ket women quar­relling and hag­gling over the price of corn.

They must cer­tain­ly get the award as the most tal­ent­ed bunch of jok­ers ever to grace, or is it dis­grace, a World Cup stage. The French Par­lia­ment met in emer­gency to dis­cuss the de­ba­cle and dis­grace of their team. Ray­mond Domenech must take the fullest of blame be­cause even com­ing in to this World Cup he clear­ly showed that he was un­able to man­age this team and gar­ner their re­spect and it just boiled, bub­bled and ex­plod­ed on the world stage and across the front pages of every news­pa­per in France. Nige­ria has tak­en their loss­es rather bad­ly and the Pres­i­dent has sus­pend­ed the na­tion­al foot­ball team from all com­pe­ti­tions for two years af­ter its poor show­ing.

These high priced, over­paid pri­ma don­na play­ers need to re­alise just how im­por­tant this thing called na­tion­al pride re­al­ly is and just how much it means to the lit­tle peo­ple in their home coun­tries.

Our lit­tle team from T&T did not em­bar­rass us at the World Cup four years ago. Giv­en our low rank in the world stand­ings, we put on very cred­itable show­ings in our match­es. There were Swedish sup­port­ers cry­ing in the stands, weep­ing open­ly, wail­ing and gnash­ing their teeth, be­cause a draw with us was re­al­ly a loss for them. While they were weep­ing, we were win­ing and cel­e­brat­ing in Dort­mund, greet­ed and treat­ed like he­roes and every­one want­ed a lit­tle piece of T&T as we took Ger­many by storm with our in­fec­tious So­ca and Chut­ney mu­sic and our love for par­ty­ing and hav­ing a good time.

There was no par­ty­ing, how­ev­er, when the Ital­ian team re­turned home re­cent­ly, shame faced and glum af­ter flop­ping out of the World Cup, hav­ing been beat­en by Slo­va­kia. Ok who is Slo­va­kia again? Twen­ty years ago there wasn't even a coun­try named Slo­va­kia, yet here they are rout­ing and dis­miss­ing the might of the Ro­man Em­pire which ex­ist­ed for cen­turies. This loss to Slo­va­kia capped off a mis­er­able cam­paign which saw them draw­ing with Paraguay and new Ze­land to end up at the bot­tom of their group. There is a se­ri­ous les­son for all the world pow­ers of foot­ball in all of this–don't take any op­po­nent for grant­ed!

All these small teams are grow­ing up and they are not in­tim­i­dat­ed by the big names any more. The Eu­ro­pean pow­er­hous­es are not scar­ing them again, the small teams are com­ing out on equal foot­ing, stand­ing toe to toe and trad­ing shots with the big guys and if the jad­ed, bloat­ed, over­priced glam­our boys aren't care­ful, these young, lean hun­gry teams will over-run them. Oh how I wish T&T had its team there in this World Cup! Had they been there, for sure I would have been send­ing this ar­ti­cle from South Africa be­cause this is the World Cup of the un­der­dog, this would have been a fine time for us, we might even have beat­en a team or two. But any­way, let's take courage from the per­for­mance of the low­er ranked teams in this world Cup and start mak­ing our prepa­ra­tions for Brazil.

T&T has to start on a very se­ri­ous plan to en­sure that we get there and that we are part of the ac­tion be­cause jump high, jump low our lim­ing sec­tion of Grover, Pris­on­er, Joe, Govie and Taz­zo in Brazil for sure. So the T&T team had bet­ter be there too, in or­der to put some licks on some teams as we do a So­ca-Sam­ba dance and con­tin­ue this trend of World Cupsets.