I know it was not the Fa­ther’s Day present many of us had hoped for, and for those who ad­mit­ted it was hard to watch, I was right there with you, feel­ing the pain.

Not so much T&T’s loss to the USA, which was al­ways go­ing to be tough play­ing against them in the US, but how T&T lost is what was dif­fi­cult for some. I sup­pose if the T&T War­riors had lost by the odd goal, it would have been much eas­i­er to swal­low, but af­ter the eu­pho­ria of the game against St Kitts and Nevis and the ef­fort away to Cos­ta Ri­ca, 5-0 was not the script many had hoped for. How­ev­er, the game gave a clear in­di­ca­tion as to how much work still needs to be done.

Now, be­fore every­one grabs their key­boards and so­cial me­dia mega­phones, let's take a col­lec­tive deep breath. Now is not the time to pan­ic and just spew ha­tred at the team. Some of the so­cial me­dia com­ments felt less like con­struc­tive crit­i­cism and more like a pub­lic ex­e­cu­tion, which, frankly, isn't help­ing any­one. Yes, T&T strug­gled on Sun­day night. Dwight Yorke knows the team strug­gled and as he said, they were poor in every de­part­ment. What is need­ed is for every­one to be firm­ly be­hind the War­riors and to fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment where the play­ers feel en­cour­aged to im­prove.

I un­der­stand what he tried to do tac­ti­cal­ly against the USA, but it did not work, and he, more than any­one else, knows that. Dwight tried to keep things tight de­fen­sive­ly, and the plan was to frus­trate the Amer­i­cans, maybe sneak in­to half­time 0-0 or just one down, and then re­lease the shack­les in the sec­ond half and be more ad­ven­tur­ous, even go for the win. But some­times, plans drawn on a white­board look very dif­fer­ent on the ac­tu­al field. He made some changes to the team, and even though the War­riors con­ced­ed two goals, they were again de­fen­sive blun­ders.

On the bright side, T&T even­tu­al­ly grew in­to the game and cre­at­ed a cou­ple of chances. Look­ing back, all the goals stemmed from glar­ing de­fen­sive er­rors, which, thank­ful­ly, gives Yorke some clear home­work: re­view the tape, find the holes, and patch them up. That's the re­al cause for con­cern.

I don’t know if the Amer­i­cans put the T&T team off their game, but they were quick­er to the ball, their con­trol was tighter, their pass­ing was sharp­er, and they pressed with in­ten­si­ty. As Yorke elo­quent­ly put it, "We were not at the races to­day." In horse rac­ing terms, his team nev­er left the start­ing gate.

There's a moun­tain of work to do in a ridicu­lous­ly short time­frame, and Dwight knows it. The play­ers, too, must be feel­ing the pres­sure – not just for a bet­ter Gold Cup show­ing, but for those cru­cial World Cup qual­i­fiers lurk­ing around the cor­ner. This is where the team needs the fans to step up. Crit­i­cis­ing is easy, but un­wa­ver­ing sup­port, even when the team is strug­gling, is what builds a team; that’s when they need sup­port the most.

T&T has two more group games in the Gold Cup: tonight at 6:45 PM against Haiti (who nar­row­ly lost 1-0 to Sau­di Ara­bia via a penal­ty), and then against Sau­di Ara­bia on Sun­day, June 22nd, at 7 pm. I ex­pect a bet­ter show­ing from them and with Levi Gar­cia back, I ex­pect he will be the jolt of in­spi­ra­tion the team needs. To move for­ward, T&T must win both games. It is go­ing to be tough and may seem like mis­sion im­pos­si­ble, but if the team be­lieves and puts their best foot for­ward, "Im­pos­si­ble Is Noth­ing!" As I said be­fore, the watch­words now are “Mis­sion Pos­si­ble!” Good luck, War­riors!

The foot­ball Gods are tru­ly spoil­ing us (or per­haps pun­ish­ing the play­ers) at the mo­ment. In ad­di­tion to the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, the in­au­gur­al FI­FA Club World Cup is hap­pen­ing in the USA. It's a dizzy­ing blur of dates, times, and teams. You switch on the TV, and it's foot­ball, foot­ball, and more foot­ball! Just don't re­ly on Flow for re­plays; ap­par­ent­ly, their re­play func­tion is still stuck in the di­al-up era.

My heart goes out to the play­ers, many of whom are com­ing off bru­tal do­mes­tic sched­ules. The purists are al­ready cry­ing foul, say­ing this tour­na­ment is ask­ing too much, kick­ing off on Sat­ur­day (June 14) and end­ing on Ju­ly 13. Most of these play­ers who play pro­fes­sion­al­ly around the globe will have to re­port back to their re­spec­tive clubs for pre-sea­son train­ing in the first or sec­ond week of Ju­ly, leav­ing prac­ti­cal­ly ze­ro time for a prop­er hol­i­day with their fam­i­lies. I don’t care how much mon­ey these play­ers make or how many ze­roes are in their pay­checks; qual­i­ty time with your fam­i­ly is sim­ply price­less.

On the field it­self, the Cham­pi­ons League win­ners Paris Saint-Ger­main showed their class ear­ly on by hum­bling Atléti­co Madrid 4-0. But spare a thought for poor Auck­land City FC, the New Zealand cham­pi­ons, who got an ab­solute school­ing from Bay­ern Mu­nich, a rather em­phat­ic 10-0. It's a long way to go, but pick­ing the four se­mi-fi­nal­ists af­ter just five days is about as easy as pick­ing the win­ning Na­tion­al Lot­tery num­bers with five ran­dom num­bers and the Power­ball. Along­side the Gold Cup, I'm ful­ly ex­pect­ing some de­light­ful sur­pris­es and ex­hil­a­rat­ing foot­ball.

Be­fore I sign off, how about South Africa, the peren­ni­al chok­ers of the crick­et­ing world? What a Test match that was – the World Test Cham­pi­onship fi­nal be­tween Aus­tralia and South Africa! We all knew what to ex­pect: a nail-bit­ing en­counter be­tween two top-tier teams. Look­ing at the qual­i­ty of both teams, this was go­ing to be a game that could have gone ei­ther way.

I will ad­mit, I thought the Aussies had the beat­ing of the Pro­teas, es­pe­cial­ly with the great line-up of qual­i­ty fast bowlers, the ter­ri­fy­ing trio of Mitchell Starc, Josh Ha­zle­wood, and Pat Cum­mins. But the op­po­si­tion was not back­ward ei­ther, with Kag­iso Raba­da, Mar­co Jansen, and Lun­gi Ngi­di be­ing equal­ly for­mi­da­ble. There­fore, it was no sur­prise that the bats­men strug­gled ear­ly, on a pitch that suit­ed the fast bowlers.

Steve Smith, as usu­al, pro­vid­ed some stub­born re­sis­tance with Beau Web­ster, get­ting Aus­tralia to a re­spectable 212. I feared the worst for South Africa when they mus­tered a pal­try 138. When the Aussies strug­gled to 207 in their sec­ond in­nings, on a pitch that had flat­tened out and was eas­i­er to bat on, set­ting South Africa a tar­get of 282, I thought, "No way!" But no­body, and I mean no­body, fac­tored in a world-class per­for­mance from a world-class play­er in Aiden Markram. What an in­nings by him, and to­geth­er with skip­per Tem­ba Bavu­ma, they fi­nal­ly won a world ti­tle for the so-called chok­ers.

For the record and for all those won­der­ing why I make such a big deal about cap­tain­cy, Tem­ba Bavu­ma has nev­er lost a Test Match as cap­tain of South Africa (let that sink in!). In Bavu­ma's first 10 match­es as Test cap­tain, South Africa on­ly drew against the West In­dies at the Queen’s Park Oval in 2024. Bavu­ma's record af­ter South Africa's World Test Cham­pi­onship 2025 fi­nal win reads as nine wins, ze­ro loss­es and one draw.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, South Africa, the crick­et­ing world salutes you! Long live Test crick­et!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.