Orin Gor­don

The last time Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fied for a world cup, 2006 in Ger­many, I went to all of their match­es – in­clud­ing the last one in Kaiser­slautern, a small town close to France and be­hind God back, as we say.

For ac­cred­it­ed re­porters, trav­el was free on Ger­many’s ex­cel­lent train ser­vice, the In­ter­ci­ty Ex­press (ICE). Pre-Brex­it, my UK pass­port got me au­to­mat­ic en­try in­to Ger­many. The hun­dreds of So­ca War­riors fans and of­fi­cials in Ger­many didn’t ap­pear to have dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting Schen­gen visas.

Tour­na­ment host­ing agree­ments re­quire has­sle-free trav­el guar­an­tees to FI­FA, par­tic­u­lar­ly for ath­letes and of­fi­cials. The heavy hand of the US De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) on spec­ta­tors, of­fi­cials, jour­nal­ists and even foot­ball play­ers, op­er­ates against the let­ter and spir­it of these agree­ments.

FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no point­ed out, cor­rect­ly, that fi­nal de­ci­sions on en­try are up to host na­tions. Let’s al­so try to see things from the DHS’s point of view. The US is en­gaged mil­i­tar­i­ly in a num­ber of places, and cau­tion about some peo­ple ar­riv­ing to po­ten­tial­ly con­duct acts of ter­ror­ism is un­der­stand­able.

How­ev­er, the DHS’s treat­ment of some ar­riv­ing for the tour­na­ment was in­ex­cus­able. So­ma­li ref­er­ee Omar Ar­tan, re­gard­ed as Africa’s most high­ly-qual­i­fied, had been is­sued a US visa in Kenya long be­fore he tried to trav­el to the US. On ar­rival in Mi­a­mi, he was sub­ject­ed to 11 hours of ques­tion­ing and re­fused en­try. The DHS’s be­lat­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was that Ar­tan had sus­pect­ed as­so­ci­a­tions with groups/in­di­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of ter­ror­ism. The Nairo­bi con­sulate had made a con­tra­dic­to­ry de­ter­mi­na­tion... Ar­tan had met the re­quire­ments for a visa af­ter a back­ground check.

The scale of DHS ac­tions – from visa re­vo­ca­tions, to visa de­nials, to long and oner­ous search­es and de­ten­tions of play­ers and of­fi­cials hold­ing valid visas – re­quired a much stronger re­sponse from In­fan­ti­no than a shrug.

For the 2007 Crick­et World Cup, eight Caribbean host coun­tries and two oth­ers cre­at­ed a tem­po­rary Sin­gle Do­mes­tic Space, which al­lowed trav­ellers to move freely with­out hav­ing their pass­ports stamped in every coun­try. Vis­i­tors from out­side the re­gion were re­quired to ob­tain a Cari­com Spe­cial Visa. Once that vis­i­tor cleared im­mi­gra­tion at, say, Nor­man Man­ley, s/he could move around the re­gion – Port-of-Spain, Bridgetown, George­town, St Georges, wher­ev­er – pass­port free.

The fine le­gal minds at Cari­com would tell you that the pro­vi­sions were com­plex, re­quired leg­isla­tive as­sent across in­de­pen­dent sov­er­eign na­tions, and need­ed to be sun­set (in mid-May 2007 when the tour­na­ment end­ed). For me, an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-in­ert Cari­com missed a great op­por­tu­ni­ty – one that’s be­lat­ed­ly be­ing grasped by some coun­tries.

The ICC got oth­er things out of us. We had to re­tire old fire traps such as GCC Ground Bour­da and the An­tigua Recre­ation Ground (ARG). Safe­ty and com­fort. If you want­ed to take a pee while watch­ing test crick­et in the South Stand at Bour­da, you had to do so in the open – be­hind the stands and against the fence.

When the crick­et got ex­cit­ing, the packed, wood­en, dou­ble-deck­er Clive Lloyd stand rocked. Lit­er­al­ly. As did the stand in which leg­endary Gravy per­formed at the ARG. Gravy was a flashily-dressed one-man en­ter­tain­ment cabaret, who per­formed be­tween de­liv­er­ies and in time to the mu­sic of Chick­ie’s Hi-Fi. Gravy could wine while do­ing hand­stands.

Med­ical fa­cil­i­ties had to be up­grad­ed to as close to first-world stan­dards of care and re­sponse as pos­si­ble. The Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) es­ti­mat­ed at the time that the re­gion in­vest­ed US$1 bil­lion in­to lev­el­ling for the cup.

“There’s no doubt… that a num­ber of the projects that are be­ing de­vel­oped now ei­ther would not have hap­pened or would have hap­pened a long time down the road,” then-chief Vin­cent Van­der­pool-Wal­lace told me in 2006.

The stakes are enor­mous. Gov­ern­ing bod­ies such the ICC, In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) and FI­FA wield tremen­dous pow­er. Close to tour­na­ment time, FI­FA ef­fec­tive­ly runs coun­tries and boss­es gov­ern­ments. The Unit­ed States may be foot­ball’s great white whale, but (as the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court has found out) she’s too big, rich and pow­er­ful to brack­et with every­one else. While the US host­ed the World Cup in 1994, her cur­rent pres­i­dent con­sid­ers half of the world to be “s***hole coun­tries”.

No amount of ob­se­quious flat­tery by In­fan­ti­no – who cre­at­ed the mock-wor­thy FI­FA Peace Prize spe­cial­ly for Trump – was go­ing to change that.