With the 2026 World Cup now fin­ished, it is strik­ing how the con­trast­ing for­tunes of the min­nows and the top teams seem to have mir­rored what is hap­pen­ing in sports in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

​When the tour­na­ment be­gan on June 11, the over­whelm­ing feel­ing was one of be­muse­ment. Be­mused by the fact that min­nows like Qatar, Haiti, Cu­raçao, Tunisia, Iraq, Uzbek­istan, Pana­ma, Jor­dan, and even war-torn Iran take the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, while T&T sat on the side­lines.

Was it tal­ent? Skill? Ex­pe­ri­ence? Bad luck? What could pos­si­bly ex­plain why those teams were at the World Cup and T&T was not? ​As the games un­fold­ed, it be­came clear that none of those tra­di­tion­al ex­cus­es held wa­ter. Yet, the ques­tion of what set them apart re­mained unan­swered as the tour­na­ment pro­gressed. When gi­ants like Ger­many and the Nether­lands were sent home ear­ly while the likes of Paraguay and Mo­roc­co ad­vanced, it wasn’t be­cause the un­der­dogs has more tal­ent, more skill or more ex­pe­ri­ence, you won­der what that rea­son could be. In both cas­es, one rea­son that comes to mind im­me­di­ate­ly is poor man­age­ment.

​In both cas­es, the re­al dif­fer­en­tia­tor star­ing us in the face was man­age­ment.

​Suc­cess or fail­ure came down to de­ci­sion-mak­ing by those in charge - re­flect­ed in match-day se­lec­tions, play­ing con­fig­u­ra­tions, and sub­sti­tu­tion poli­cies. It is this ex­act brand of poor man­age­ment that bur­dens T&T’s sport­ing fate. We see it across the board, from those en­trenched in crit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing po­si­tions to stake­hold­ers who frankly should know bet­ter.

Our sport­ing bod­ies, in­clud­ing foot­ball, ath­let­ics, cy­cling, swim­ming, hock­ey, net­ball, and box­ing, peren­ni­al­ly lament the lack of spon­sor­ship. While that scarci­ty is re­al, these bod­ies large­ly have them­selves to blame. Many have been com­plic­it in al­low­ing the treat­ment they re­ceive, sit­ting idle and silent when struc­tur­al changes were des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Now, they are reap­ing the whirl­wind from those they trust­ed in the past.

​An on­line meme re­cent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed with a sub­scrip­tion form for “band­wag­o­nist”that is, those who want to jump on the band­wag­on to sup­port a new side in the World Cup fol­low­ing the demise of their orig­i­nal se­lec­tion. The un­der­ly­ing theme – most peo­ple want to as­so­ciate them­selves with win­ners.

​Our sport­ing teams are not win­ning. Why would any cor­po­rate spon­sor jump on to their band­wag­on? Gov­ern­ment spon­sor­ship then? How much gov­ern­ment spon­sor­ship do we re­al­ly think some of those afore­men­tioned min­nows get? The ones from wealthy coun­tries maybe, but many of them are not from wealthy coun­tries, so the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome is some­thing that needs to be ad­dressed go­ing for­ward in these dif­fi­cult times.

De­spite lim­it­ed spon­sor­ship, these small­er na­tions man­aged to make their way to the World Cup, so it is not about the mon­ey. It is about man­age­ment. And that is where we con­tin­ue to trail our peers. To put it blunt­ly, plain talk bad man­ners, the man­age­ment of sport­ing bod­ies in this coun­try sucks.

My an­nu­al “Boo­Boo” awards seek to iden­ti­fy every year the one that sucks the most, maybe, but tru­ly, they all suck. It has been an un­en­vi­able task when peo­ple from all over T&T send their nom­i­na­tions and we have no choice but to on­ly put for­ward the top 10 (based on the num­ber of reg­is­tered names from the cit­i­zens of T&T).

Those at the top seem to be more fo­cused on their po­si­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, rather than the teams’ po­si­tion in the sport. Tough de­ci­sions are in­flu­enced by non-sport­ing con­sid­er­a­tions and we will nev­er progress. Own­er­ship and ac­count­abil­i­ty are for­eign con­cepts to our sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors. The prob­lem al­ways re­sides low­er down the totem pole un­til, one day, you re­alise you have reached the bot­tom of the pole and there is no one be­low for blame to be passed to.

Foot­ball in this coun­try has not yet reached its nadir. We have fur­ther to fall. The last time I checked, we were ranked 102 out of 211 teams. We have fur­ther to fall un­less we come to­geth­er and get a plan in place and re­move some of those per­sons who are very tox­ic and in­tent on­ly on want­i­ng T&T to fail, even though their own track record has been plagued by failed ap­point­ments and ques­tion­able de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

San Mari­no is ranked 211 with An­guil­la and the British Vir­gin Is­lands right above them. Some have sug­gest­ed that rad­i­cal changes in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport are re­quired now, if we are not to join them at the bot­tom of the rank­ing, but I be­lieve if every­one comes to­geth­er and unites in the in­ter­est of T&T foot­ball, then some tin­ker­ing can as­sist, but there is dead weight and brav­ery is need­ed by the lead­ers in foot­ball now.

We can bring in as many play­ers with ten­u­ous strands to T&T as we can find; we will still fall fur­ther if the changes that are need­ed at the zon­al lev­els don’t take place. This is where we must start now. Maybe we should look for ad­min­is­tra­tors with ten­u­ous strands to T&T first and then look for play­ers? We might have more suc­cess, even if some with lim­it­ed minds might ob­ject.

This lament, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is not unique to foot­ball but to oth­er sports and in par­tic­u­lar, it is al­so true for the oth­er sport that is dear to me, horse rac­ing. Cor­po­rate spon­sors have dried up, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport seems bereft of any ideas to re-in­vig­o­rate the sport. Sad­ly, in this case, it seems that the (band)wag­on will have to come be­fore the horse. And with that, the end of horse rac­ing as the promis­es made over a year ago to save horse rac­ing have blown up on many, as some find them­selves in need of prop­er make-up to cov­er up their em­bar­rass­ment.

Ed­i­tor’s Note

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.