Momentous week for football.
By: Peter O' Connor (Newsday).The week ahead is a big one for our football— its present and its past, both of which build for its future. Today, it is one year since Chris Birchall scored the equaliser against Bahrain, keeping us in the challenge for the last place available in Germany 2006.
On Wednesday the Soca Warriors play Austria in Vienna, in our last friendly for the year. We do not know very much about Austria’s football, but they are co-hosts, with Switzerland of Euro 2008.
This therefore is an important match for them, as they will not be playing qualifiers during next year. Austria have played in seven World Cup Final competitions, winning 12 of the 29 matches they played.
This is an important match for us too, as we have limited opportunities to bring our team together.
On Thursday, we celebrate the first anniversary of Dennis Lawrence’s headed goal in Bahrain, and our magnificent victory there, which sent us to Germany.
At every function and in every forum on Thursday, we should remember and pay tribute to that accomplishment. I hope the team will not be traveling back to England that day, and that they can toast their triumph together.
Then on Sunday, November 19 is the 17th anniversary of the match against the USA, which knocked us off the Road to Italy. In commemoration of that event and other important dates in our football, New Era Inc. along with the TTFF is re-staging that famous, but heart-wrenching match.
The Strike Squad of 1989 will meet the USA Team of 1989 in the Red Day Re-match. The event is being staged to honour our past footballers, particularly our World Cup Teams of 1965 (our first challenge), 1973 (the Haiti refereeing debacle) and the Strike Squad of 1989.
There is no doubt that the success of the Soca Warriors in qualifying for Germany 2006 (and finishing 27th out of 32) has spurred interest in our past qualifying attempts.
I know that there are some who will ask: Why look back at past “failures” when we now have success to celebrate. But those attempts, which were the stepping stones to success, need to be acknowledged, and indeed honoured.
Remembering our teams and players of the past acknowledges the foundation upon which the success of 2006 was built. There is a connecting thread running through our teams and players through the years when we almost made it, right to the Soca Warriors of today.
Sedley Joseph, captain of our first World Cup team, served during the 1990s as team manager. The goalkeeper of that team was Lincoln “Tiger” Phillips, who is now Technical Director of the TTFF.
Oliver Camps was team manager in Haiti, and again in 1989 with the Strike Squad. He went to Germany in 2006 as president of the TTFF.
Everard “Gally” Cummings was the player of the competition in Haiti 1973, and coach of the Strike Squad in 1989. Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy were key members of the Strike Squad and the Soca Warriors, and Clayton Morris, Michael Maurice, Brian Williams and Hutson Charles, all Strike Squad members, are all serving football, building the future as coaches of our national teams.
To keep this thread going, it is important that we recognise and honour our past World Cup teams and players, especially from those years when our performances were outstanding.
I suppose that while living in the shadows of the disappointments of 1973 and 1989, we could not really “celebrate” and honour those teams.
However, having exorcised those ghosts by qualifying in 2006, we can, and must, celebrate our “near-triumphs” (for that is how we can see them now) of ‘73 and ‘89. And this is what we will do on Sunday.
However, there is a national team which, so far, remains unrecognised, and without the honour it deserves for its achievements.
The Under-20 team of 1990 qualified for the FIFA World Under-20 Championships in Portugal 1991. That team, coached by Bertille St Clair, and captained by Dwight Yorke, also included current Warriors goalkeeper Clayton Ince, Michael McComie, Angus Eve, Jerren Nixon, and the now deceased Richard Theodore, all of whom have represented TT at the senior level.
Was the team forgotten because they qualified under the dark clouds following November 1989? In fact those issues made our young players’ feat even more outstanding.
Within two weeks of TT being ousted from Italy, those youngsters picked up our football and smashed all Caribbean opponents to qualify for the CONCACAF play-offs in Guatemala in April 1990, where they secured their position in Portugal.
Qualifying under any conditions is outstanding, but doing so under the disappointment of November 19, was a magnificent achievement by these young men for their country. Their recognition is overdue, and needs to be addressed.
But with almost 100 years of football, and 40 years of World Cup attempts behind us, why just concentrate on the Strike Squad?
As New Era CEO Peter Taylor put it, the Strike Squad was really “the Peoples’ Team”. They were all based in TT, and for most of the year lived in their communities.
All of our warm-up matches were played at home, as were our home qualifiers. All our away qualifiers were brought live on television for the first time.
This team was closer to us than any other. In 1973, the CONCACAF Final Round was played in Haiti, there were no home-and away matches. There was no television coverage, not even live radio broadcasts.
We could not “touch” our players. Then in 2005 almost all of our players were overseas, flying in at the last minute for our matches.
We never saw them as persons with whom we could relate. We only saw them as they walked out on to the field. As much as our people love and admire our Soca Warriors.
There was a special bond, a brotherhood, between us and the Strike Squad, the likes of which we may never experience again, given the “internationalisation” of our football. More the pity!
So, Red Day Re-Match is certainly a valid event, and a worthy tribute, to our past and for our future, not only to revive memories of the Strike Squad, but to remember the Soca Warriors for their two anniversaries as well.
The match also holds a special place in the hearts of United States Soccer, not just for their victory on that day, but for how we accepted the result.
It has not, and will not, be forgotten by us, or by the Americans who were here on November 19, 1989.
So make sure you get your tickets, your Strike Squad Shirt, and get down to the Stadium next Sunday, and watch some of Gally’s Kaisoca Soccer as we dance to Lancelot Layne’s “Target, Target, Strike Squad”.
But today, pause to remember the Warriors and Birchall’s goal, and on Thursday, lift your glasses to “Tallest” and the Warriors who fulfilled the dreams of so many over so many years.
Tobady's date: Sunday, November 12 2006
THE Strike Squad, Trinidad and Tobago's football team of 1989 which missed out on qualifying for the 1990 World Cup Finals in Italy
