The coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, has per­haps made life more chal­leng­ing for many of us from ath­letes to of­fi­cials, those in the busi­ness world to the av­er­age man and la­dy in the street, not to men­tion stu­dents in schools.

But what it has taught us is how to use tech­nol­o­gy to make life sim­pler and to get the re­sults that are achiev­able with­out hav­ing to be in a face to face sit­u­a­tion. Of course, there was no oth­er way for my­self and the oth­er mem­bers of the 23-man squad and staff to avoid un­der­go­ing three Covid-19 PCR and Rapid Tests since Thurs­day night in face-to-face in­ter­ac­tions with the very pro­fes­sion­al and might I add car­ing health of­fi­cials at the Om­ni Cham­pi­ons­gate fa­cil­i­ty in Or­lan­do. The staff here and the of­fi­cials of US Soc­cer have been ex­treme­ly sup­port­ive to the Trinidad and To­ba­go men’s team ahead of to­day’s in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly with the US Men’s Na­tion­al Team.

The COVID-19 cri­sis has brought about years of change in the way com­pa­nies, or­gan­i­sa­tions and teams in all sec­tors and re­gions do busi­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to a new McK­in­sey Glob­al Sur­vey of ex­ec­u­tives, their com­pa­nies have ac­cel­er­at­ed the dig­i­ti­za­tion of their cus­tomer and sup­ply-chain in­ter­ac­tions and of their in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions by three to four years. And the share of dig­i­tal or dig­i­tal­ly en­abled prod­ucts in their port­fo­lios has ac­cel­er­at­ed by a shock­ing sev­en years. Com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als ex­pect most of these changes to be long last­ing and are al­ready mak­ing the kinds of in­vest­ments that all but en­sure they will stick.

Usu­al pro­to­cols be­tween the teams and me­dia and host broad­cast­ers be­fore an in­ter­na­tion­al event such as to­day’s friend­ly would be for the head coach and key play­ers hav­ing to meet face to face with the com­men­tary team to dis­cuss prepa­ra­tions and tac­tics for the match, ba­si­cal­ly to present the com­men­ta­tors with back­ground in­for­ma­tion to make their job eas­i­er for the match.

On Sat­ur­day, Ter­ry Fen­wick and Alvin Jones were able to sit in the com­fort of their ho­tel rooms and have the same dis­cus­sions vir­tu­al­ly with Alexi Lalas and his col­leagues at Fox Soc­cer. All me­dia in­ter­views with al­so done vir­tu­al­ly over the past cou­ple days with­out hav­ing to ac­com­mo­date me­dia at the train­ing ses­sions which al­lowed the play­ers to fo­cus on their game some more with­out any dis­trac­tions.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, per­sons in­clud­ing ath­letes and teams as well as sports pro­mot­ers have moved dra­mat­i­cal­ly to­wards on­line chan­nels and com­pa­nies and in­dus­tries have re­spond­ed in turn.

It is clear that to stay com­pet­i­tive in this new busi­ness and eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment re­quires new strate­gies and prac­tices.

The in­abil­i­ty of fans to wit­ness live sport in­side the sta­di­ums through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has been felt strong­ly by many across the globe. From the pre-game rit­u­als, half-time de­brief with friends and the at­mos­phere with­in the sta­di­um, fans have been miss­ing out on the com­mu­nal and ex­pe­ri­ence-led as­pect of a phys­i­cal game.

To­day 4,500 fans will en­ter the Ex­plo­ria Sta­di­um while mil­lions will view the match on Fox and Uni­vi­sion. My usu­al post-match press con­fer­ence will take place vir­tu­al­ly from in­side the T&T dress­ing room and it should be a good re­hearsal for my­self and the oth­er mem­bers of the T&T back­room staff as to what to ex­pect or what ap­proach to adopt for our up­com­ing World Cup qual­i­fiers which be­gin on March 25th at home to Guyana.

I can’t wait to see how US Soc­cer has adopt­ed a strat­e­gy, look­ing at new and in­no­v­a­tive ways to el­e­vate the sports fan ex­pe­ri­ence as well as fo­cus­ing on the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor from a broad­er sense in spite of all the re­stric­tions and new pro­to­cols that we must all fol­low at this time.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com