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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

T&T footballers break camp to party after disastrous start to Gold Cup

by

24 days ago
20250622
Trinidad and Tobago Football Association president  Kieron Edwards

Trinidad and Tobago Football Association president Kieron Edwards

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

A group of se­nior na­tion­al foot­ballers com­pet­ing in the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States broke camp just hours af­ter man­ag­ing a 1-1 draw with Haiti on Thurs­day evening.

Guardian Me­dia has been re­li­ably in­formed that the play­ers at­tend­ed a June­teenth Afro-Caribbean-themed par­ty at Tik­i­la’s Bar in Hous­ton.

This comes in the wake of the na­tion­al team’s dis­ap­point­ing 5-0 de­feat to hosts USA on June 15, fol­lowed by their in­abil­i­ty to se­cure a win against a ten-man Hait­ian side days lat­er.

Dur­ing a phone call yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards con­firmed that some mem­bers of the team at­tend­ed the par­ty.

He sug­gest­ed that he did not see any­thing wrong with their at­ten­dance.

“It wasn’t a par­ty. It wasn’t a par­ty. Re­mem­ber it was June­teenth. That deals with the slaves etc, so it’s a West In­di­an thing. One or two per­sons went out. The place was sup­posed to close at 12. We went. We meet and greet, but it was con­trolled.

“Re­mem­ber we had the fel­las in camp in Eng­land for some weeks now, so that be­ing a hol­i­day, a lot of Tri­nis come out in Hous­ton. The se­nior play­ers get to come out, men who putting in the work a while now,” the TTFA pres­i­dent said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands from eye­wit­ness­es that more than ten mem­bers of the squad at­tend­ed the event.

Ear­li­er in the day, Guardian Me­dia sought a com­ment from TTFA me­dia of­fi­cer Shaun Fuentes. A re­sponse was on­ly re­ceived af­ter Guardian Me­dia sent a pho­to that sur­faced show­ing one of the play­ers at the event.

As a re­sult of their open­ing de­feat and then sub­se­quent draw, T&T must de­feat Sau­di Ara­bia this evening to stand a chance of ad­vanc­ing to the next round of the re­gion’s most pres­ti­gious in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment.

One par­ty­go­er, a T&T na­tion­al, who saw the team’s mem­bers, said, “I can’t be­lieve af­ter the poor per­for­mance those fel­las put down in that Haiti game, they end­ed up in the same par­ty as me af­ter the match. It’s mid-tour­na­ment. The more I think about it, the more it bog­gles my mind.”

Ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al team sources, the prac­tice of play­ers break­ing camp af­ter match­es—some­times even dur­ing ma­jor tour­na­ments—has been hap­pen­ing for years.

They said the par­ty group, led by two sea­soned play­ers who pre­vi­ous­ly played pro­fes­sion­al­ly in the Unit­ed States, is known among team­mates as the “Boa­tride Crew”.

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk un­der­stands that ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers op­posed to the par­ty­ing cul­ture dur­ing na­tion­al team camp some­times butt heads with the “Boa­tride Crew”, ask­ing them to set a bet­ter ex­am­ple for younger play­ers.

In Sep­tem­ber 2016, three na­tion­al team play­ers were fined for break­ing team camp two days be­fore a World Cup qual­i­fi­er in T&T against Guatemala. The play­ers were iden­ti­fied by a lo­cal on­line pub­li­ca­tion as Kevin Moli­no, Jo­evin Jones, and Mekeil Williams.

“In all hon­esty, we haven’t had to deal with a sit­u­a­tion like this be­fore. We have had mi­nor stuff with play­ers break­ing in-house rules. But not to the ex­tent that they were out of the ho­tel,” for­mer T&T foot­ball coach Stephen Hart said of the in­ci­dent.

Ear­li­er that year, Moli­no was banned from a match af­ter break­ing team camp be­fore a Caribbean Cup clash with Mar­tinique.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the TTFA sought to in­clude a strict code of con­duct in na­tion­al team play­ing con­tracts.

There have been sev­er­al ex­am­ples of na­tion­al teams ex­pelling play­ers from squads for break­ing team camp.

In Sep­tem­ber 2024, Koso­vo ban­ished three play­ers–Ar­i­janet Muric, Edon Zhe­gro­va and Flo­rent Mus­li­ja–for par­ty­ing af­ter a 3-0 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing loss to Ro­ma­nia.

In No­vem­ber 2011, Chilean foot­baller Ar­turo Vi­dal was among a group of play­ers fined and sus­pend­ed by the Chilean FA for show­ing up late to na­tion­al team train­ing af­ter a night of par­ty­ing.

In June 2011, eight Mex­i­can play­ers were banned from Co­pa Amer­i­ca af­ter they were caught sneak­ing women in­to their ho­tel room.

In Sep­tem­ber 2010, two for­mer Mex­i­can play­ers–Car­los Vela and Efrain Juarez–were sus­pend­ed for or­gan­is­ing a par­ty in a ho­tel dur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al du­ty. Eleven oth­er play­ers were fined.

T&T’s foot­ball team has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for the 2026 World Cup.

With re­gion­al pow­er­hous­es USA, Cana­da, and Mex­i­co au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy­ing as hosts, T&T has a re­newed op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for the World Cup for the first time since mak­ing his­to­ry in Ger­many in 2006.

The team was drawn against Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da in its fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing group.

The group win­ner qual­i­fies for the World Cup di­rect­ly, while the sec­ond place will go to a play­off.

The TTFA ap­point­ed for­mer na­tion­al team cap­tain and Pre­mier League leg­end Dwight Yorke as man­ag­er in No­vem­ber 2024.

Ac­cord­ing to sources close to the TTFA, Yorke and his coach­ing team will al­leged­ly earn around US$1 mil­lion over their two-year con­tract.

The TTFA sought cor­po­rate and state as­sis­tance to cov­er the salary, in­clud­ing from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny. 

Yorke’s hir­ing was de­scribed by TTFA pres­i­dent Ed­wards as “a steal of a deal”, last No­vem­ber.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view that month, Ed­wards said that Yorke’s salary was be­low the av­er­age wage of re­gion­al coach­es. 

“I’m not go­ing to state Dwight Yorke’s salary, but it’s nowhere close to those num­bers (earned by oth­er coach­es) or the US$50,000 earned by Steve Mc­Claren (Ja­maica’s head coach). What Dwight has done for T&T foot­ball, it’s not about mon­ey for him,” he said.

Na­tion­al foot­ball sources said, how­ev­er, that some play­ers who have rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try in re­cent years have not re­ceived full match pay­ments.

Fol­low­ing T&T’s draw with Haiti on Thurs­day, the TTFA’s Face­book page post­ed a high­light video with the cap­tion, “We haven’t de­liv­ered the way we should. Too many bumps, not enough re­ward. Are we even a lit­tle bit pleased or sat­is­fied? Far from it!

“But we don’t fold–we push for­ward. Every step is part of a big­ger mis­sion, and we’re still locked in. One team, one flag, one goal.”


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