Phillip Watts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, says Cab­i­net has agreed to ap­prove the Cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Amend­ment Bill 2025 and al­so agreed that this bill is to be in­tro­duced in par­lia­ment at its ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.

The an­nounce­ment comes as great news for the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TFA) in its ef­fort to widen the tal­ent pool of the se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team and coach Dwight Yorke in their bid to qual­i­fy for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup Fi­nals to be joint­ly host­ed in the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

How­ev­er, the news comes too late for coach Yorke to utilise any of his play­ers he may have un­der con­sid­er­a­tion for his team’s open­ing two match­es start­ing tonight ver­sus Cu­ra­cao in their Group B Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Fi­nal Round open­er against Cu­ra­cao at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, from 8 pm, while they trav­el to Kingston, Ja­maica, to meet that coun­try on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 9, from 8 pm as well.

Speak­ing at the Post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter Watts said, “The pur­pose of this bill is to amend the cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Act Chap­ter 1.50 to pro­vide the ac­qui­si­tion of cit­i­zen­ship of per­sons born out­side of T&T if his or her grand­par­ent was a cit­i­zen of T&T at the date of his or her birth.”

The pro­posed amend­ment seeks to make changes to the Cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Act to widen the po­ten­tial pool of in­di­vid­u­als who are en­ti­tled to seek cit­i­zen­ship. The leg­is­la­tion cur­rent­ly al­lows in­di­vid­u­als to ap­ply for cit­i­zen­ship based on their par­ents’ na­tion­al­i­ty. The pro­posed change would al­so al­low ap­pli­ca­tions based on the na­tion­al­i­ty of their grand­par­ents.

Watts added, “We be­lieve that by in­tro­duc­ing the grand­par­ent law, we will cre­ate a wider pool of ath­letes to tap in­to in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

“Cur­rent­ly, for ex­am­ple, in foot­ball, we have 211 foot­balling coun­tries un­der FI­FA (the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport of foot­ball), and we are one of the five coun­tries that do not use that par­tic­u­lar grand­par­ent law.

The move by the gov­ern­ment will al­so come as great news for coach Yorke, who, up­on his ap­point­ment as head coach last No­vem­ber, echoed the calls by pre­vi­ous coach An­gus Eve (2021-2024) for the im­mi­gra­tion laws to be amend­ed to al­low for per­sons who had grand­par­ents of T&T cit­i­zen­ship to be al­lowed to seek cit­i­zen­ship them­selves to help widen the foot­ball team’s tal­ent pool.

Com­ment­ing on the an­nounce­ment, T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards first­ly stat­ed that he was ho­n­oured and priv­i­leged to be the head of the lo­cal foot­ball body when such a law is go­ing to be amend­ed not just for foot­ball, but for sport on the whole.

He added, “When it re­lates to foot­ball, im­me­di­ate­ly we have some im­por­tant games; the World Cup qual­i­fy­ing fi­nal round be­gins to­mor­row (to­day), and we play against Cu­ra­cao.”

Ed­wards ex­plained, “T&T is the on­ly coun­try in that group (Con­ca­caf Group B World Cup qual­i­fiers) with Cu­ra­cao, Bermu­da and Ja­maica that does not utilise that law.”

“So, this will now give us that com­pet­i­tive edge again, and we know that if you look at Ja­maica, the pop­u­la­tion is twice our size, and then they draw from their di­as­po­ra.

This will give us back a com­pet­i­tive edge when it comes to re­gion­al foot­ball.

“When it comes to our im­me­di­ate games with this law be­ing changed, we can be able to utilise grand­parent­age play­ers as soon as in this fi­nal round; this will open up over 20 play­ers out of Eu­rope. And over 20 play­ers out of Amer­i­ca and Cana­da, where play­ers have al­ready reached out to us be­cause of the dis­cus­sion around the grand­par­ent law and want­i­ng to show in­ter­est in play­ing for T&T, rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try of their fore­fa­thers.

“So, we want to re­al­ly tap in­to the di­as­po­ra and utilise it, not just in foot­ball, but I think all sports across the board could ben­e­fit from this law be­ing changed.”

T&T’s next set of World Cup match­es are set for Oc­to­ber 10 against Bermu­da at the Bermu­da Na­tion­al Sports Cen­tre, De­von­shire, from 7 pm, and four days lat­er at Cu­ra­cao at the Sta­dion Ergilio Ha­to, Willem­stad, al­so from 7 pm.

The So­ca War­riors will then play their fi­nal two match­es at home against Ja­maica at Mu­cu­rapo on No­vem­ber 13, from 8 pm, and No­vem­ber 18 ver­sus Bermu­da at 9 pm.

And it is hoped that for the Oc­to­ber en­coun­ters, some of the tar­get­ed play­ers could be added to the T&T squad.

At the con­clu­sion of the Fi­nal Round in No­vem­ber, the win­ner of each group will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly for the FI­FA World Cup 2026, join­ing co-hosts Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the USA.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the two best sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers will ad­vance to the FI­FA In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Play­off, sched­uled for March 2026, for a chance to se­cure a World Cup spot. For the first time in his­to­ry, the Con­ca­caf re­gion could be rep­re­sent­ed by as many as eight teams in a men’s FI­FA World Cup.

T&T, qual­i­fiers for the 2006 FI­FA Ger­many World Cup, se­cured its spot in the fi­nal round of qual­i­fiers af­ter end­ing in the sec­ond spot in its four-team Group B qual­i­fiers as the sec­ond-placed fin­ish­ers in the five-team pool with sev­en points from four match­es, the same as Grena­da but ahead on goal dif­fer­ence, of plus-nine to plus-four, while Cos­ta Ri­ca end­ed in the top spot with a max­i­mum of 12 points.