With COVID-19 cas­es spi­ralling out of con­trol and the death rate ris­ing like if one is watch­ing some form of Sci-Fi film along with the new­ly en­forced State of Emer­gency, one is hope­ful that as Tri­nis, we all fi­nal­ly wake up to the re­al­i­ty that this virus fright­en­ing­ly is with us. As a re­sult, there is tru­ly no oth­er choice but to fol­low the strict guide­lines of the Min­istry of Health; stay at home please un­less you are faced with no al­ter­na­tive such as go­ing out for food/med­ical sup­plies or if you are un­able to work from home.

This stay at home mea­sure gives us more time to catch up on our sports as the rest of the world seems to be get­ting back slow­ly but sure­ly to some kind of nor­mal­i­ty. The Eng­lish Pre­mier League has al­lowed teams with a home fix­ture in the fi­nal two rounds to ac­com­mo­date 10,000 fans in­to their venues but still ad­her­ing to guide­lines - wear­ing masks etc. Two tour­na­ments that have piqued my in­ter­est were the CON­CA­CAF Fut­sal Cham­pi­onship held in Guatemala City which led to 4 coun­tries qual­i­fy­ing for the FI­FA Fut­sal World Cup in Lithua­nia from Sep­tem­ber 12 to Oc­to­ber 6, 2021. The oth­er tour­na­ment which is be­ing played cur­rent­ly in Cos­ta Ri­ca is the 2021 CON­CA­CAF Beach Soc­cer Cham­pi­onships. Trinidad and To­ba­go are in a tough group with hosts Cos­ta Ri­ca and the Unit­ed States.

The top two teams from each of the 3 groups and the two best third-place teams ad­vance to the quar­ter-fi­nals even though the beach So­ca War­riors have lost their first two games, they can still go through if they win their fi­nal game con­vinc­ing­ly. The prize for the fi­nal­ists will be guar­an­teed spots at the 2021 FI­FA Beach Soc­cer World Cup in Moscow, Rus­sia from Au­gust 19 - 29. How­ev­er, let's jour­ney back to the Fut­sal So­ca War­riors who lost to new­com­ers Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (DR) 6-2 and then to the hosts Guatemala 4-3 in a much clos­er en­counter. Ad­mit­ted­ly I did not ex­pect much from the fut­sal men. I did not be­lieve that their prepa­ra­tion was good enough and they looked tac­ti­cal­ly out of depth against the DR who seemed more de­ter­mined than T&T. Per­haps as new­com­ers to the tour­na­ment, they were keen to prove that they had every right to be tak­ing part and they were not go­ing to be the whip­ping boys for oth­er teams.

I’m un­cer­tain if the fut­sal So­ca War­riors un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the DR but they nev­er got in­to the game and so, af­ter los­ing the en­counter, mis­sion im­pos­si­ble was next on the agen­da to beat one of the tour­na­ment favourites - the host coun­try. The task was not just to win but win by 4 clear goals. T&T showed ef­fort as they gave the Guatemalans a good fight and in the end, they were un­lucky to lose. I kept won­der­ing where this team was against the DR. Why didn't they play like this as if they did, they would have won their open­ing game. Che Ben­ny scored one of the goals of the tour­na­ment but the team should have found rea­son to be­lieve that there is po­ten­tial for fu­ture suc­cess with bet­ter prepa­ra­tion.

The ques­tion is where does T&T go from here con­cern­ing fut­sal? Some form of re­search will prove that most of the top coun­tries have prop­er run leagues and the cor­rect fa­cil­i­ties to play fut­sal. The venue in Guatemala looked in pris­tine con­di­tion. Some­how, T&T needs to get some sort of fa­cil­i­ty to match what I saw in Guatemala. There ex­ists a cul­ture of small goal foot­ball in this coun­try so I be­lieve that with prop­er plan­ning, T&T can com­pete with the top CON­CA­CAF coun­tries when it comes to fut­sal. I am un­cer­tain whether a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­ists for fut­sal in the coun­try and hope­ful­ly the Min­istry of Sport or the Sports Com­pa­ny will meet more in-depth with the fut­sal of­fi­cials to find out the way for­ward. The Key will be as­cer­tain­ing how in­ter­est can be gar­nered in the sport to at­tract more play­ers and how to de­vel­op the sport. A prop­er plan must be ar­tic­u­lat­ed. At times, T&T’s prepa­ra­tions and sub­se­quent per­for­mances in many of these com­pe­ti­tions am­pli­fy the view held by some that the team plays be­cause of its mem­ber­ship with CON­CA­CAF and must sim­ply par­tic­i­pate.

The T&T beach soc­cer squad seemed to have been bet­ter pre­pared even though they lost their open­ing games. Again, how many times have we seen var­i­ous na­tion­al teams go to tour­na­ments not ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared and just de­pend on raw tal­ent? We all know that tal­ent alone is not enough but some­how this team seemed dif­fer­ent. FI­FA has made beach soc­cer in­to a big­ger sport than orig­i­nal­ly when it was first played. There would be the de­trac­tors who would quick­ly say this type of foot­ball is on­ly good for when you go to Mara­cas Beach and you want to sweat be­fore tak­ing a dip. But like any oth­er sport, in beach soc­cer one has to plan tac­ti­cal­ly against your op­po­nents, where is their strength etc.

I un­der­stand the sand in Cos­ta Ri­ca is dif­fer­ent to the sand where oth­er coun­tries play. The vari­a­tion with the bounce on this sand ap­pears to be un­nerv­ing for the teams. For ex­am­ple, in T&T, the ball typ­i­cal­ly sticks in the sand with lit­tle to no bounce - this seems to be the com­plete op­po­site to what many teams are ac­cus­tomed to. All the coun­tries were on­ly al­lowed 45 min­utes to train at the venue so the Cos­ta Ri­cans seemed to have a sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage by play­ing at home.

Some of T&T’s shoot­ing and move­ment left much to be de­sired. How­ev­er, the team showed a good spir­it, nev­er gave up and fight­ing the Cos­ta Ri­cans right to the fi­nal whis­tle was in­deed ad­mirable. They came up short by 5 goals to 3. I thought they would have done bet­ter against the Amer­i­cans as like T&T, ac­cli­ma­tis­ing to the con­di­tions would have al­so been dif­fi­cult for the US team but their shoot­ing was ex­cel­lent and they seemed very com­posed when they were in front of the beach war­riors goal. Los­ing 5-2 was an­oth­er dis­ap­point­ment for the team how­ev­er, with those dif­fi­cult games be­hind the T&T team, there is still hope they can beat Turks & Caicos by a wide mar­gin and sneak in­to the quar­ter-fi­nals and who knows what can hap­pen from there.

In my view, there is room in the sport­ing land­scape for both fut­sal and beach soc­cer to be­come pop­u­lar. Let us start a league, train coach­es, match of­fi­cials etc. and in­tro­duce the games to the younger peo­ple en­sur­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween all the types of foot­ball that is played in the coun­try. The fut­sal na­tion­al team showed great promise and the of­fi­cials must en­sure the mo­men­tum is kept up and that T&T teams don’t just wait un­til the next tour­na­ment comes around. In speak­ing with the beach soc­cer of­fi­cials, I know they have plans for the ad­vance­ment of beach soc­cer in this coun­try - or should we call it beach foot­ball? Let's hope both sports fur­ther put T&T on the world map.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er