"All I want for Christ­mas is my two front teeth,

My two front teeth, see my two front teeth!"

(Alvin and the Chip­munks, 1962)

Af­ter 63 years of in­de­pen­dence, we have nav­i­gat­ed our­selves in­to a swamp - eco­nom­ic, so­ciopo­lit­i­cal and moral. And every se­ri­ous com­men­ta­tor is at risk, with every hon­est com­men­tary that holds up the mir­ror for so­ci­ety to look at it­self, of cre­at­ing their own trib­u­tary to the riv­er of neg­a­tive dis­course that in­un­dates us dai­ly in the lega­cy and so­cial me­dia.

It is in­evitable. So­ci­ety is suf­fo­cat­ing in in­sti­tu­tion­al and moral col­lapse of its own mak­ing. Pro­longed ex­po­sure to neg­a­tive news and views leads in­ex­orably to in­creased anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, and stress - equal­ly for the in­di­vid­ual as for so­ci­ety as a whole. The con­stant bar­rage of dis­tress­ing in­for­ma­tion can over­whelm in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­ety, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to process, neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing over­all men­tal health and threat­en­ing to make Tri­ni life a Hobbe­sian or­deal that is "soli­tary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". This is why so many peo­ple love Car­ni­val. It af­fords an­nu­al re­lease and the il­lu­sion of re­lief.

Writ­ing a news­pa­per col­umn was not at all on my radar when Kei­th Clement, sports ed­i­tor of the Trinidad Guardian, of­fered me the op­por­tu­ni­ty. I was not re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed but he per­sist­ed and so here we are. I be­gan with a piece on FI­FA's club World Cup in Ju­ly. I write on­ly about foot­ball. And I write for my­self. Chat­G­PT can­not think or chat for me, thank you very much. I humbly keep my un­in­formed opin­ions on oth­er sports to my­self but foot­ball is my forte, and foot­ball is part of the na­tion­al morass, you see. One can­not es­cape com­ment­ing on foot­ball's ubiq­ui­tous neg­a­tives when look­ing at the state of the coun­try's most pop­u­lar sport. They are re­lent­less.

So, un­der­stand­ing that the con­stant flow of neg­a­tive news, com­men­tary and "bac­cha­nal", deep­ens the per­va­sive state of anx­i­ety and even de­pres­sion among the pop­u­la­tion, in the spir­it of Christ­mas I will avoid re­leas­ing a lit­tle trib­u­tary stream in­to the ris­ing tide of na­tion­al neu­ro­sis (or is it na­tion­al psy­chosis?) this week - even if, on re­flec­tion, there are so many foot­ball de­vel­op­ments, both na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al, that I must ig­nore to do so.

SS­FL

I could write about the cry­ing need for new lead­er­ship in SS­FL (Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League) - the biggest league in the coun­try - which can­not even fol­low its own Con­sti­tu­tion and clear­ly lacks a pro­fes­sion­al ad­min­is­tra­tive and com­pe­ti­tion man­age­ment corps; which is im­plod­ing un­der the weight of its con­tin­u­ing and in­tractable reg­is­tra­tion prob­lems; which is ev­i­dent­ly in need of a "moral­i­ty po­lice" to en­force eth­i­cal be­hav­iour up­on its prin­ci­pals, coach­es and team staffs giv­en the ob­sti­nate, con­tin­u­ing, and ap­par­ent­ly in­sur­mount­able il­le­gal use of "over age" play­ers in low­er di­vi­sions; which al­lows schools to field two teams in the same com­pe­ti­tion, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for po­ten­tial match fix­ing; and which has done ab­solute­ly noth­ing (while its pres­i­dent is a big TTFA safe­guard­ing hon­cho) to pre­vent TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) from de­stroy­ing the ca­reer and rep­u­ta­tion of one of the league's coach­ing icons, Shawn Coop­er, who con­tin­ues to lan­guish in TTFA safe­guard­ing lim­bo with­out charges or hope be­cause the as­so­ci­a­tion knows it holds a mo­nop­oly of pow­er as long as Coop­er opts not to em­bark on le­gal ac­tion against it; and more. I could write on that. But I will not.

TTFA

I could write about the need for bet­ter, more ca­pa­ble TTFA lead­er­ship as the cur­rent crew stum­bles punch drunk from fail­ure to fail­ure; or its in­abil­i­ty to re­solve the "So­ca War­riors" de­ba­cle; or its on­go­ing an­ni­hi­la­tion of Shawn Coop­er while its safe­guard­ing per­son­nel globe trot on FI­FA's dime; or the fact that it ten­dered tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence of its po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive paral­y­sis by de­clar­ing a Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment al­low­ing the re­moval of per­sis­tent­ly ab­sent Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers to be the big achieve­ment of its re­cent an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing; or the fail­ure of its re­cent tech­ni­cal "meet­ing with stake­hold­ers" to at­tract any sup­port, as ev­i­denced in the abysmal at­ten­dance of its mem­ber­ship - a sure sign of dis­in­ter­est and dis­il­lu­sion­ment; or its fail­ure to ap­point a new tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor and head of coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion three months af­ter the for­mer was fired and the lat­ter re­signed in protest, leav­ing stu­dent coach­es aban­doned in mid-course; or its in­abil­i­ty to an­nounce the start of the new TTPFL (T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League) Tier 2 sea­son, the last hav­ing end­ed in Ju­ly; and more. I could write on that. But I will not.

FI­FA

I could write about the so called "peace prize" cre­at­ed by the ob­se­quious Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no with­out con­sult­ing FI­FA's mem­ber­ship and with­out trans­par­ent cri­te­ria or im­par­tial ad­ju­di­ca­tion to cater to Don­ald Trump's pos­tur­ing as the world's peace­mak­er when the grotesque re­al­i­ty is that peo­ple keep go­ing up in ex­tra-ju­di­cial flames and smoke in the Caribbean Sea and the Pa­cif­ic Ocean and blood yet flows un­staunched in the killing fields of Gaza, Con­go, the Thai-Cam­bo­di­an bor­der and sundry oth­er parts where Trumpian peace has al­leged­ly been de­liv­ered; or I could write about the emer­gence of USA as the fi­nal fron­tier in foot­ball's gold rush, a new Wild West that FI­FA has joined CON­CA­CAF and CON­MEBOL in min­ing with­out re­stric­tion; or I could write about FI­FA's plan to sell park­ing spots near 2026 World Cup sta­dia for more than the price of some ac­tu­al match tick­ets at pre­vi­ous World Cups as it feeds its raw, in­sa­tiable greed; or I could write about the grow­ing glob­al fan re­bel­lion against FI­FA's bru­tal World Cup 2026 tick­et prices, up by more than three hun­dred per­cent on the cost of Qatar 2022 tick­ets, more ev­i­dence of its unadul­ter­at­ed avarice; or I could write about the US trav­el ban on vis­i­tors from thir­ty coun­tries and oth­er mea­sures that threat­en the at­ten­dance of or­di­nary Iran­ian, Hait­ian and even Eu­ro­pean fans at WC 2026, which stands in stark con­tra­dic­tion to FI­FA's much bal­ly­hooed mantra of glob­al broth­er­hood and uni­ty; or I could write about the glar­ing dou­ble stan­dard of FI­FA's fail­ure to de­cide the case against Is­rael brought by the Pales­tine FA since 2018 be­cause the glob­al body keeps kick­ing the can down the road while Rus­sia was sus­pend­ed with­in days of in­vad­ing Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022; and more. I could write on that. But I will not.

No, I will ig­nore all of that. The sea­son of good will and good cheer is up­on us. And I want to end the year on a bright, pos­i­tive note.

Dear San­ta

There­fore, with the naivete of child­hood, here is my let­ter to San­ta Claus:

"Dear San­ta, I write to you from Trinidad and To­ba­go - the lit­tle is­land coun­try with the US radar close to Venezuela. San­ta, the whole world is on the warpath. Even your home­town, Rovanie­mi in Fin­land, is be­ing pre­pared as a NA­TO base for war with Rus­sia. Still, I have tried to be a good guy this year, San­ta, so I want to ask you for some­thing, please. In Tri­ni, we like foot­ball but things need im­prove­ment. All I want for Christ­mas is the de­liv­ery of some hu­mil­i­ty, moral­i­ty and en­light­en­ment to those in the com­mand­ing heights of our foot­ball, to al­low our lead­ers the abil­i­ty to dis­cern what they do not know and to give them the will­ing­ness to work with those who do; to make them hold the in­ter­est of the game and its peo­ple at heart, and to have them lead our coun­try to­ward a worth­while vi­sion of a bet­ter foot­ball fu­ture where there is none now. Thank you very much in ad­vance, San­ta. This would be the per­fect gift for me."

I leave hard truths to 2026. Un­til then - Peace, Love and Foot­ball for all. And to all a very mer­ry Christ­mas.