ANYBODY who asked my view before the last game against Mexico would have been given an assessment on TnT’s World Cup qualifying campaigns to lead them to a pattern that speaks for itself.
Anyone who asks my view now on TnT’s chances of getting past Sweden, England and Paraguay to make it through the first round of next year’s finals in Germany would have to tolerate my mocking mirth.
For two reasons: Team selection and team preparation.
Don’t even mention technical analysis.
From what I’ve heard so far, highly-paid coach Leo Beenhakker says don’t expect the team that qualified for the finals to be the same team that plays at the finals.
In so saying, he made mention of the team’s average age being 28 years.
And, if I’m not mistaken, in so saying he was merely acting as mouthpiece to those for whom he works, some of who have also publicly dubbed Russell Latapy and Dwight Yorke “too old” to take to Germany.
At the same time, I have heard special advisor Jack Warner speak gleefully about reopening the doors to four players born and bred in Britain with no attachment to TnT, save and except for some vague strain of ancestry.
These include one already disqualified by FIFA, but such is the determination to get a quick fix at all cost.
There is not as much determination to fight FIFA’s ridiculous recognition of just one international day in six months leading up to the finals, yet such inconsistencies are neither here nor there with the majority of us in this time of euphoria and mindless adulation.
However!
As I was saying before, re: the adoption of foreigners to make the national team for the World Cup finals, such is the level of contempt for all persons who play locally in the TnT Pro League -- a league that Warner abandoned in 2001 when others demanded independence in running it.
And a league which Beenhakker has publicly written off as being too substandard to draw from, although the success of people like Aurtis Whitley and Cyd Gray has made him think about looking harder.
So, he too, like all his predecessors, has looked mostly to the foreign-based professionals without regard to the conditions under which they play in separate teams abroad, the role they are required to play and even that they are not required to play for long periods.
But he is taking it a step further: He is supporting the adviser on making the same mistake the Reggae Boyz made by making up half this team with foreigners.
He is supporting the wanton neglect of local players -- the refusal to use this euphoria to see what new life it has put in old players and what lift it has given those previously bordering on national selection or those coming out of the junior ranks.
He supports wanton neglect of this revival of belief that one can get far through sport, by neglecting to get everybody of every age group playing in some belief that they could make the team.
In a serious nation (notwithstanding serious nations already have systems in place for all-round development from one level to the next) there would be national trials or some form of competition for everyone to have a fresh look-over.
When Sven Goran Eriksson was brought to England, he did not allow any one person to whisper into his ear as to who should or never again should play for the national team with his own reputation at stake.
He went about watching every player at every level and still does, so that the best player of the moment would represent the team under his charge.
And unlike Beenhakker, who is abroad for all but the little five-day window in which the pros become available by FIFA’s edict, Eriksson is in England fulltime watching the football that Englishmen play.
From all reports, Beenhakker has described the local game as being too poor, so he would not be seen watching too much of that or even traversing every corner of the islands looking for new finds, with the gun of responsibility for failure being held to his head.
No!
But then, as Alvin Corneal says, he is European.
Back to the question of who plays: It would not be more locals, it would not be the “old guys”.
That is well telegraphed by official word so far.
It would be foreign and foreign-based players.
Add to that, the odd player that any adviser or person with ambitions to the technical advisor’s job who has Beenhakker’s ear and a personal interest in that player earning a contract, insists must be on the team.
What do you get?
A team you can’t recognise as players you watched grow before your eyes; or had a hand in coaching, supporting, giving taxi-fare or a meal to; or playing for your school or club or even who lives next door.
And if they do play badly, what is euphoria and nationalism now would slump into an anticlimactic heap that would crudely bring us full frontal to the emotional place we were at as a nation before qualifying.
Trouble is few of us would have raised our voices against it before it happened.
We sing praises to a mortal who has always put in a dollar to make 10 and, even if those praises were justified for the mere question of “perseverance”, we refuse to say, “thanks, Jack. You have done more than enough. This is beyond you now, we’ll take it from here”.
You see, with everyone young and old putting their spirit into it, the very soul of the nation is at stake now.
We can’t afford to entrust that in any one man.
The unsubstantiated spending of millions and millions, and the claims for many millions more that are “needed now” because the guaranteed millions “will come after the finals”, in one thing.
The tourism and other marketing possibilities are another.
Refusal to provide accountability for funds and donations received until the very end when all queries would have to be made on just one document rather than now on a day-to-day basis as funds come in and funds go out, is yet another thing.
That’s okay, we can lose all that, but not our peace and tranquillity. Not our soul.
But from all appearances, that is where we are headed because we’re talking foreign players, foreign-based players and friends for contracts while, at the same time, we’re not crying out against FIFA’s decree of just one recognised date for international warm-ups -- a decree directed to affect only us smaller nations.
We are not going to be seeing a string of warm-ups that help the team of strangers mesh on time to give a creditable showing at the finals.
We are seeing and hearing the usual promises of big warm-ups and live-in camps followed by a far more low-keyed notice that these matches and camps are off (this is now traditional at the country’s most serious level of football).
We are not hearing about a regrouping, rethinking or re-planning in the wake of FIFA’s announcement, to bring to mind the possibility of training an alternative team (or parallel, if you like) from among those players who are home and available to us at moment’s notice. Once together for seven months, training and camping occasionally, they are likely to get to know each other as well as the Strike Squad did, if not play as well.
But, you know what?
It would take too much thinking, too much moving away from the norm, too much spending of the millions that are coming too fast for the rest of us to keep up with.
And why train an alternative team that may not go to the World Cup anyway?
Why, just to make sure Beenhakker earns his keep? Just to give more people an opportunity to be of the high-level that is expected of our pros?
Just to see the TnT Pro League boast of a better quality of players next season as if they had any hand in this, while boasting “we’ve survived without” our former benefactor?
Just to improve the local base while our best players are playing abroad?
Why?
Why when that is not what we are about?
Well, I think you get my point now.
The World Cup qualifying experience is set to come and go and TnT’s football and footballers would not have benefitted.
The wave is passing and we are refusing to put as many to surf it as possible because, as usual, we are only talking about bringing in the millions; and thinking of losing full control once others rise.
One month has passed since qualifying and we have done nothing but count money (not publicly of course) and call for more.
Beenhakker has not been required to stay and see any of the premier finals between and among Pro League and Super League that have taken place locally since then.
No one has said: “Here is the map to the World Cup finals in June.”
No one has said: “Here is how more players benefit from this exposure.”
And absolutely no one is saying: “Let’s start our next qualifying campaign right now.”
In that respect, I believe this World Cup campaign would be a failure in more ways than one.
There is a way to change this, but none among us has the guts. We need to say: “Thanks, Jack, we’ll take it from here.”
Then we need to step in and not make the same mistake focusing on money but on making a big footballer out of everybody for his own good and, by extension, the good of the nation.
And to ensure that the nation benefits more than any of us as individuals.