Former FIFA vice president Austin Jack Warner, who has widely been acknowledged as the man whose assistance and administrative experience helped Trinidad and Tobago qualify for its first and, to date, only World Cup in Germany in 2006, is not confident of 2026 World Cup participation for the Soca Warriors.
“Let me tell you this, and who is vex? Well, vex. We will not see a World Cup final in football in our collective lifetime, not even for the one coming up (2026), and remember, I have told you so,” Warner said on the Isports radio program, hosted by Andre Errol Baptiste on Friday.
“We have gotten more chances and more slots to qualify, but our chances will not be better but worse. First of all, we don’t have the talent at the top, and in terms of coaching, we don’t have that will to allow our football players to succeed. We don’t have the competition at the bottom. Ask the average Trinidad and Tobago footballer to name five footballers in the country. He can’t. The average Trini cannot, and something is wrong,” said Warner.
Warner believes the coaching from Angus Eve to Derek King will not work. “I know Derek King very well; he used to coach my club called Joe Public. I know him very well, but Derek King is out of his league. Derek King does not understand the nuances of coaching at the World Cup level. And that is the difference I am talking about. Derek King is not in Leo Beenhakker’s class, so to speak. England got rid of Gareth Southgate. What are we doing in terms of this?” asked Warner.
I was told that this was unfair as Trinidad and Tobago’s football team does not have that kind of money.
He said, “If you get the money to pay a top-class coach, you will spend less money in the judiciary and less money in national security. The money that you will save from national security, you can pump back into sports. It follows that you have to prioritise and see what is important to you, and if sport is the vehicle for national unity and development and for people’s pride, put the money where it is.”
He continued, “I recall where sportsmen and sportswomen have to spend their own money attending to injuries. It does not help until we get serious about sports. Nothing from nothing will leave nothing.”
Responding to the new Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) executive, who has assumed power since the departure of the Normalisation Committee in April, Warner said, “They are still green, and it is too early to judge, but at the top, they have some geriatrics who should have left football long ago. It is a bit too early.”
With respect to the support needed from corporate Trinidad and Tobago, Warner said, “They will not get corporate support. They (corporate TT) only come at the end. They come at the end, not at the beginning, where they are badly needed.
“There is no local coach that can take Trinidad and Tobago to the World Cup at this time, and I mean that sincerely, and that is not a criticism; that is a realistic statement; we don’t have it; we just don’t have it. Jamaica is looking for a top-class coach; they have never considered Dwight Yorke. Look where Jamaica has gone. They don’t have the energy and oil we have, but they have the pride. We don’t have that, and that is the difference.”
Asked for an update on his legal challenges, Warner concluded, “The matter will be thrown out, but it takes time in Trinidad and Tobago. All the colleagues that have been arrested and imprisoned in the United States have since appealed based on the Supreme Court statement and judgment, and I am now waiting to see what will come out of these appeals, and I will take it from there, but I don’t want to say too much on that at this stage, except to say, I am very optimistic.”
