The im­proved per­for­mances of our na­tion­al foot­ball team, pop­u­lar­ly known as the So­ca War­riors, have giv­en lo­cal sport fans rea­sons to hope again.

On Sat­ur­day night in­to ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, the T&T team, ranked 103rd in the world, came up against the world’s 11th ranked team and num­ber one ranked Con­ca­caf team, Mex­i­co and held them to a goal­less draw in the open­ing game of the 2021 Gold Cup.

On the heels of two qual­i­fy­ing games against Montser­rat and French Guiana, the So­ca War­riors would have come in­to the game less rest­ed than the Cen­tral Amer­i­can pow­er­house in a tour­na­ment in which Mex­i­co are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons. They held their own against re­lent­less at­tack­ing foot­ball.

Goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip stood out ex­cep­tion­al­ly with sev­er­al crit­i­cal saves that earned him the Man of the Match ti­tle, and a ster­ling per­for­mance from Radan­fah Abu Bakr in de­fense al­so helped keep the Mex­i­cans at bay. But it was the over­all team per­for­mance that we ap­plaud.

New­ly-ap­point­ed coach An­gus Eve’s game plan of ab­sorb­ing the pres­sure and seek­ing to launch counter-at­tacks when pos­si­ble cer­tain­ly worked to give T&T equal points in the game and brought back mem­o­ries of the nil-nil draw against Swe­den in the 2006 World Cup.

But while the per­for­mance brought sat­is­fac­tion to many, the game was marred by the ug­li­ness of racism.

On two oc­ca­sions, ref­er­ee Ri­car­do Mon­tero was forced to stop the game be­cause of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry chants from the crowd at the AT&T Sta­di­um in Ar­ling­ton, Texas. It was the first stage of pro­ce­dures to be fol­lowed when racism is present in foot­ball games. The next stage would have been game aban­don­ment, which, in this case, did not oc­cur.

The com­ments, di­rect­ed at the T&T play­ers, lat­er spilt over in­to so­cial me­dia posts. Not on­ly were the T&T play­ers called by the most deroga­to­ry racist terms, but were al­so de­scribed as “an­i­mals” who ought to be kept “locked up” on their is­land in­stead of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment.

Some post­ed mon­keys of­ten used as a racist pro­jec­tion of peo­ple of African de­scent.

Those who chose not to use racist terms were equal­ly as nasty in their de­scrip­tions. One post de­scribed T&T na­tion­als as “a bunch of dirty street co­conut kick­ers”, an­oth­er as “cave­men” and a third felt the play­ers ought to be kept in jail and starved.

This is the very ug­li­ness of the “beau­ti­ful game” that FI­FA and re­gion­al foot­ball bod­ies have been fight­ing to elim­i­nate.

Racism sim­ply has no place in sport.

Fol­low­ing the out­rage over the killing of George Floyd and the rise of the “Black Lives Mat­ter” move­ment, the Eng­lish Pre­mier League and oth­er Eu­ro­pean leagues would pause be­fore the kick­off of games, to al­low play­ers to go down on one knee as a sign that they op­pose racism in all forms.

That it was al­lowed to hap­pen on Sat­ur­day night to the ex­tent that the game had to be stopped twice, is dis­ap­point­ing, hurt­ful and dis­re­spect­ful to all those fight­ing for the elim­i­na­tion of dis­crim­i­na­tion. It can­not go un­ad­dressed.

As of yes­ter­day, Con­ca­caf, the re­gion­al body in charge of the tour­na­ment, made no state­ment on the mat­ter.

This is not good enough.

For the sake of our play­ers and for the good of the game, Con­ca­caf has a du­ty to show that this type of be­hav­iour will not be tol­er­at­ed un­der its um­brel­la and un­til it does, it too must be held ac­count­able for the ac­tion of the fans on Sat­ur­day night.

To by­pass the pro­ce­dures and penal­ties usu­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with this type of be­hav­iour is a sign of weak­ness from Con­ca­caf and an added shame to the na­tions it rep­re­sents.

We look for­ward to their ac­tion in this re­gard, as done in oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions. We de­serve noth­ing less.

Mean­while, we trust that our boys out there will not be de­terred by this as they do their best to con­tin­ue to lift the hopes of the na­tion at a time when we need it most.

As the say­ing goes, when they go low, we go high.