"The more things change, the more they remain the same!"
Just over 24 years ago, I wrote some of the excerpts you will read below in a famous Dancing Brave column in 2000, particularly as it relates to the state of football and cricket in the region, where T&T was at least competitive more often than not. I have adjusted where necessary for timing differences (although there appears to be none on the surface).
In May 2000, then Pope John Paul II who at the time was 79 and used to be a goalkeeper according to all written reports on his career, spoke out on football as he knows it. The Pope no longer plays football - the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak - but is said to be an enthusiastic follower of the Vatican City Football League, which must be the smallest national league in the world.
John Paul 11 preached a sermon on the evils of football to the top men in UEFA (European Football Association), a lesser version of the really corrupt giants known as FIFA. On the surface, most of what he desires is great and honest and therefore has no chance of materialising in this age of money laundering, bribes and betting scandals, but here perhaps the Pope is hoping that his perceived naïve will allow some readdress by conscious-minded Catholics - or does he seriously expect professional footballers to turn overnight into a set of Holy Joes (clearly wishful thinking). He expressed sentiments to which UEFA and worse yet the dogmatic FIFA will pay pious lip service, before carrying on exactly as before.
While a lot of people outside of the paying coffers of football will know that the Pope is right (even 24 years later). Those in power even regionally such as CONCACAF and various Caribbean Football Associations should take heed before it is too late. Oh, most in control of football's vast riches may say most of it is predictable and forgettable: bad behaviour, flashy cars, loads of cash and nightclubs. And, naturally, the role-model heresy.
Being a role model in sport is, of course, about being commercially exploitable, not about setting a genuine example as in other spheres of Life. But the Pope at least is making an effort to be heard which is much more than can be said of any other world figure, even now, as money continues to rule the world, sadly not in a positive way. Not by all but by a good number, who measure everything in terms of bank account, despite whoever they ride over to achieve such.
Parents, not sportsmen, are role models. "It's not my job to bring up your kids," the former basketball player, Charles Barkley, said during his playing days. Camus, the existentialist goalkeeper, said: "After many years in which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I most surely know in the long run about morality and the obligations of men, I owe to football."
The Pope in 2000, believed football is "an important vehicle for values such as sacrifice, constant endeavour, respect for others, loyalty and solidarity". Though piously expressed, this is true of every team sport that was ever played. Team sports are not possible without such things. Fair enough, but it is not exactly the stuff to liquefy the blood of St Januarius (three times a year in Naples, Italy)
The Pope in 2000 also said that it would be a good thing "if promoters, managers and communicators of the football world ensure that football does not lose its essential characteristic as a sporting activity and is not submerged by other interests - above all, economic ones".
Again, this sounds like nothing we have heard before and has to be commended. It is a pontiff on automatic pilot telling the football rulers that when your time comes, one will judge you greater on your dastardly deeds on earth. But think about it, football is in a process of transition. It is a fantastic game and these days there are fantastic amounts of money in it.
Not so very long ago, financial involvement in football was largely a self-aggrandising semi-philanthropy. Local man makes good and buys into the local football club. The administrators were men of vocation: looking after the game - it was not then called a product - they loved. In general, television was thought to be a bad thing, leading to financial ruin. There is more football to enjoy, and everyone in the game is infinitely richer. Football is now the concern of the corporate. It has been dumbed down in the process: penalty shootouts being the most obvious example.
Change, once started, cannot be stopped halfway. There are warning signs that the Pope is right that the game is losing what it is that makes it a game.
Since that time some persons' sporting careers whether in football or cricket have nose-dived, proving that God does not like ugly in any form, football practitioners (managers, coaches, presidents of associations, vice presidents, secretaries and players) should heed all of this.
One of the fundamentals is the belief that the match, the team, the result really matters: and that there is no higher consideration than this. This is not a moral stance, but it is the matter on which the playability and the "watchability" of football and cricket depend. Is it too much to ask that even sponsors would prefer football and cricket to be on higher planes? In T&T, we continue to sell football and to a lesser extent cricket, as simply a quick fix of money for many and get richer joy for a select few who own clubs and gain the benefits of sponsorships and transfers.
Football if we are not careful will lose its power to inspire the world's imagination - and if it loses that, it will lose its earning power. Football is in the position of a bird with a stone attached to its foot by an unusually long piece of elastic.
Football is the bird, its commercial backers the brick. There are two possibilities: one, that the elastic breaks and the bird goes flying off into the wide blue yonder. The second is that the stone comes flying through the air and whacks the bird in if I might use some non-papal language, the bum. Football's audience can only pray that it is the former.
In T&T, we are heading the very same way, and we look at how Guyana is able to stage such a massive and greatly marketed product such as the new cricket Global Super League, while we continue to struggle with any Sports Tourism in either football or cricket, we need to act quickly in 2025 or continue to be left behind which in time might become – Left Out.
Thank God for his holiness, Pope John Paul 11 in 2000, sadly we did not listen, but it is never too late if we really all want to succeed!
