Caligiuri is ah good fella man... he had to go some ways towards making up for that and he did. I thought this was the perfect way to segue from the heartache dat was the end of the Strike Squad era...and the dawning of the Soca Warriors crowning achievement.
Sports of The Times
In Flatbush, 'Ger-ma-ny, Ger-ma-ny' 
November 17, 2005
By GEORGE VECSEY
''ONCE in a lifetime,'' Damian Snagg said. ''You only see this once.''
He was absolutely right. In Flatbush, Brooklyn, right there on the television yesterday, Trinidad and Tobago was trying to qualify for the World Cup. It had never happened before.
Trinidad and Tobago had come heartbreakingly close in 1989, however, when Paul Caligiuri of the United States put the boot to the two-island nation on the final day of qualifying.
Americans remember that day with a touch of sadness and guilt. Never have we seen such sportsmanship as we saw that November day in Port of Spain. The stunned fans, all of them wearing red, patted American journalists on our backs, congratulating us, as if we had anything to do with it.
Caligiuri remembers that day, not only for his booming 25-yard goal in the first half, but also for the way the Yanks were treated after the game.
''We arrived in two little vans and walked right through the crowd,'' Caligiuri recalled the other day. Then, after the 1-0 victory, the United States had to leave in the same two flimsy vans.
''I've played in Latin America and the Caribbean, where they throw rocks at you, the military police have to stop them from rocking your bus,'' Caligiuri continued. ''Never, ever, did you hear people congratulate you the way people did in Trinidad. The guys started giving them paraphernalia -- our shin guards, our headbands, anything. We appreciated it so much. Normally, you'd be ducking down in your seat.''
That was the start of a rising American era of soccer -- five straight World Cups as of next year. But 16 years was a long time for T&T to wait for another chance. All over the world, there are smaller nations trying to reach the World Cup just once, for a chance to play Brazil and Germany. These ethnic supporters mysteriously do not show up on television ratings, but they are all over the United States.
Half a dozen men from the islands, who play for the Synergism S.C. of Brooklyn, were fidgeting in Derek Marshall's apartment yesterday, watching good old Fox Soccer Channel. Either T&T, with a population of 1.1 million, or Bahrain, with a population of 727,000, would become the smallest nation to reach the World Cup. Because of a road goal in the 1-1 draw in Trinidad last Saturday, Bahrain would qualify with a scoreless tie at home yesterday, a huge advantage.
Marshall, a friend of a friend of a friend, had invited me to root with his countrymen yesterday. I don't mind admitting it: I came to root, wearing a red shirt. Before the game, I rang up Caligiuri, now the men's and women's coach at Cal Poly Pomona in California.
''I am rooting for them,'' Caligiuri said the other day. ''Every place I go, there's somebody from Trinidad. They look at me and say, 'I am Trinidadian.' I just want them to win so I can get off parole.''
I handed my cellphone to Marshall, Snagg and Earl Boyce. Caligiuri invited them to visit sometime. Their laughter seemed like a good omen. We ate spicy jerk chicken, rice and beans and drank beer. (Marshall had supplied Beck's, and I had brought some St. Pauli Girl -- two great minds thinking alike: German beer for good luck.)
Early in the first half, Chris Birchall, the English-born minor leaguer whose mother is from Trinidad and who had scored the 30-yard Caligiurian-style boomer last Saturday, was injured and had to leave the game. This was not a good omen.
T&T was clearly the better team -- but without a goal, its stutter steps and deft passes would be worthless. The score was 0-0 at halftime. Early in the second half, Dwight Yorke took a corner kick. Once a top striker in England, Yorke was facing the possibility of never playing in a World Cup, like George Weah of Liberia and Ryan Giggs of Wales and George Best of Northern Ireland.
Yorke whacked a high, curving kick, and Dennis Lawrence, all 6 feet 7 inches, rose above the sparse Bahrain defense and headed the goal between a defender's sluggish ankles. In Flatbush, pandemonium began.
Now began the scary part. Marshall, our host, kept telling the defenders, ''Get back, get back, that's what soccer is all about.'' We writhed as Bahrain stripped the ball from the goalkeeper for an apparent goal, only to have the referee nullify the play, ruling a foul had been committed against the goalkeeper. Marshall, who knows the game, thought the referee was wrong, but the call stood.
As the final whistle blew for a 1-0 victory, we all stood up and traded high-fives. I reached Paul Caligiuri's answering machine, and Brian George, Dave Dean and Henry Inniss and the others chanted ''Ger-ma-ny! Ger-ma-ny!'' into the phone. The sporting gesture of that crowd in Port of Spain in 1989, 16 long years ago, had been rewarded.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.comSourceSports of The Times
Winning Fans Is Easier Than Winning Games June 6, 2006
By GEORGE VECSEY
Hamburg, Germany
THE smallest nation is the biggest fad of the 2006 World Cup, so far.
With a combined population of 1.3 million, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago are the smallest soccer entity to qualify for the final tournament since the World Cup began in 1930.
The world loved the Jamaican bobsled team that clattered and rumbled its way downhill in a few Winter Olympics. The Jamaicans were competitive and accomplished men who wanted to be taken seriously, but they did not exactly mind the publicity. The professional players from the two islands don't want to be patronized, but they don't mind the attention being paid to them.
They've been waiting a long time for this. Two current team members, Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy, were on the team that was stunned by the United States, 1-0, on Nov. 19, 1989, in Port of Spain, when all it needed was a tie to qualify for the World Cup in Italy.
Yorke, 34, who plays for Sydney FC in Australia, did not dress for a final tuneup yesterday, a 2-1 victory over FC St. Pauli, a third-division German team. The tiny Latapy, 37, who plays for Falkirk of Scotland, was in the lineup of mostly second-stringers, his braids flopping. The entire team was cheered as few visitors ever are for a road match in the highly partisan world of soccer.
St. Pauli fans, known for their mellow behavior and adoration of their own team, wore free red caps and T-shirts passed out by functionaries of eBay, the Internet giant, which has adopted the Trinidad and Tobago team for reasons that are surely more mercenary than sporting.
Leane Kenapf of the St. Pauli district was wearing red. How long has she been a supporter of T&T? "Since yesterday," she admitted with a smile, in English. The converts are falling in line, drawn in by the tiny band of fans who came here on tours from the Caribbean. There was even a band playing the form of calypso and reggae known as soca. (The team is called the Soca Warriors, which has nothing to do with the word soccer.) The soca sound was being blasted from loudspeakers at FC St. Pauli's enclave, near the bawdy Reeperbahn. T&T had found a home in Germany.
"I like Trinidad because it is a small nation," said Karsten Hoppe, a public relations man who lives near the club. "But we don't know how to support them because we don't know their songs. Usually, every football team has a song. We don't know theirs." The German fans improvised, not badly.
Now it is time for Trinidad and Tobago to have its 270 minutes of fame — three games, against Sweden, England and Paraguay, in the next two weeks in order to advance, a tall order for the mostly European-based players and their coach, Leo Beenhakker, 63, one of four Dutch head coaches in this World Cup.
Still, there is always the thrilling possibility of upsets in the first round of any World Cup. Who will forget Cameroon shocking the defending champion Argentina in the first match of 1990, or Senegal exposing the defending champion France in the first game in 2002? But those two African outsiders had a greater population and more soccer credentials than T&T, only the fourth Caribbean nation to reach the World Cup.
This year there are eight new nations looking to make their mark right away. Trinidad and Tobago is joined by Angola, Togo, Ivory Coast and Ghana, all from Africa, and three European squads competing since being spun off from former amalgamations — the Czech Republic, Ukraine and the already dissolving artificial nation of Serbia and Montenegro. But Trinidad and Tobago is the smallest, which makes it the most likely to stir up the affections of the fans.
"I don't think we'll get very far," said David Niles, an equity analyst from Diego Martin, Trinidad, who lives in Berlin and was at St. Pauli yesterday, wearing his own red jacket. "We'll fight, but it will be tough."
Niles, who said he attended Baruch College of the City University of New York, still shudders about the loss to the United States in 1989 — "our Sept. 11," he said, not being disrespectful but making the point that the loss, although only a soccer game, has haunted the nation ever since.
In their worst nightmares, Trinidadians still remember Paul Caligiuri of the United States thumping a left-footed volley from around 35 yards. American reporters who were there still remember how gracious the home fans were to visitors in the crowd afterward, which enabled us to root for T&T when it squeaked past Bahrain in a playoff last November.
The World Cup is a different level altogether. "We expected it to be hard, but this is even harder," said Stern John, a former standout in Major League Soccer who now plays for Coventry City in England. He was a child when Caligiuri put the boot to the Soca Warriors. Now they are finally in a World Cup — "an unbelievable achievement," John said. It's enough to make St. Pauli fans wear red in their own stadium, enough to turn the Soca Warriors into a cult.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.comSource