Latas play 20 minutes and we have him as a sub on the Concacaf squad?
??
THIS IS WHY !!!!!!!!!!!!!
26 minutes of magic...
Roddy Thomson Scottish football reporterScotland at the World Cup started as a bit of a joke in the pubs and the papers of my country's biggest city. Just about anyone who is drawn to play England at the World Cup can count on the support of the majority of Glasgow's fanatical football followers. And when two of your most famous players are either presently attached to, or have already gone down in legend, at a club the size of Glasgow Rangers, it really becomes a bit of a no-brainer.
Of course, this proud Tartan football nation had also been missing from the biggest show on Earth since France '98. A painful run for a country well used to lording it with the world's finest going back to its heyday in the 1970s. Lording it, and messing up, I should add. Because the other thing about Scotland's love-hate affair with the World Cup is its infinite capacity to self-destruct.
Perhaps the sense that Trinidad and Tobago were, as Russell Latapy put it to me, the "biggest underdogs in World Cup history", suggested a less painful viewing experience. Certainly, the addition of second division St Johnstone forward Jason Scotland to Leo Beenhakker's final squad helped. The No 9, scandalously rejected for a work permit at Dundee United, quickly became a television advertising star in the countdown to the competition.
Irn-Bru, you'll be glad to know, tastes better with ice. And a laugh, if not lime. One of the few indigenous soft drinks to outsell Coca-Cola in its own market, the brand is infamous for its comic advertising. And to be fair to Scotland, the player, he played along with the company's biggest joke of all, its £250 fee for a series of three commercials which made a player known by football aficionados a household name throughout the month of June.
But Scots following Trinidad and Tobago at the World Cup quickly became no laughing matter. As one Trini put it to me in Rotenburg, where we followed the team and your magnificent fans for the best part of three weeks, the Scots are "West Indians marooned off the Arctic Circle". We'll lime with the best of you, believe you me. And if you won't just take my word, ask anyone who was with us in the north of Germany for this balmiest of summers.
I have a confession to make, my support wasn't entirely altruistic, at least to begin with. The reason I was there was to assist the "Little Magician" himself with media duties. Similarly to striker Scotland and Marvin Andrews, the Kirkaldy faith-healer who plays for Rangers in his spare time, Latapy had signed a not inconsiderable deal to reveal his thoughts only in Scotland's biggest-selling tabloid, the Daily Record.
Latapy has long been infamous in the land where he has now lived for the past seven years. Mainly thanks to getting picked up by Edinburgh police at 3 a.m. with your captain Dwight Yorke--48 hours before he was due to star in the Scottish Cup final for Hibernian. Dismissed by the club, he signed instantly for Rangers, only to find his Hibs manager Alex McLeish, making the same journey a few short months later.
Contrary to popular belief in Scotland, McLeish never held any grudge against Latapy. In fact, one of the first things McLeish did upon leaving Rangers this summer for a break from the very real pressures of managing one half of Scotland's "Old Firm" was to text Latapy his best wishes for the games against Sweden, England and Paraguay. No-one would have felt more for Latapy in his behind-the-scenes battle with Beenhakker for pitch-time than "Big Eck", as he is known.
Of course, Russell never exactly hides his fondness for the good life either--and that is perhaps where the greatest connection between Trini and Scots can be found. In the opening installment of his Record diary, Latapy regaled his audience with the assertion that, even if he would shortly turn 38 and go down in history as the oldest outfield player in the tournament, it was hardly any reason to give up the fags.
In fact, the only time he ever held back was when we were doing pictures with him in the gardens of the Landhaus Wachtelhof where the team were based. "I've smoked right the way through my career, from Trinidad to the Champions League. I know my body and it won't be quitting the four or five fags a day I'll smoke during the season that will make me play any better. Just don't take my picture with a fag. That would break my Mum's heart to see that."
As we'd sit in the dark wine cellar of their heavily-guarded five-star retreat chewing over each day's events, I couldn't help wondering if Latapy might not have been acknowledged as one of the really great No.10s in world football had he ignored the urge to pull on those Marlboro Lights. But the Scots are not like Trinis for nothing, and I soon realised what a ridiculous notion that was to entertain.
Besides, had it not been for the access Latapy was giving me and my photographers (affectionately labelled Roddy II and Roddy III by what seemed like the entire Trinidadian community in Rotenburg), we simply would not have had the opportunity to experience what, without doubt, goes down as one of Scotland's most enjoyable World Cup forays ever.
We've generated a few tales ourselves, not least in Germany back in 1974. Players of the calibre of Kenny Dalglish and Billy Bremner were in that side, but thanks to a spectacular 0-0 draw with Zaire (we're good at these ones), the most oft-recalled tale of that campaign was how 11 of the squad ended up, ahem, with the same barmaid called Helga in their team hotel (not Kenny, I hasten to add).
However colourful life got on days off around the Wachtelhof, it never quite reached those proportions.
Roddy II's father Brian was a veteran of that journalistic trip, and he delighted in taking his readers on a stroll down memory (should that be mammary?) lane on a quiet day this summer. The list goes on, with the group who bought and re-fitted a dis-used submarine and set off from big Marv's Fife lair to attend the 1978 finals in Argentina. I was only a boy at the time, but I still have the 'Scotland: World Cup winners '78' mug delivered by the milkman to every house in the land before a ball had even been kicked.
Yes, with our Jimmy-hats, kilts and hard-luck stories, we knew how to lime at these events long before the rest of the world recognised their potential. In fact, FIFA routinely dished out fans awards to the Tartan Army during a heyday which lasted right up until the mid-1990s. And the greatest tribute I can pay to the Soca Warriors, on and off the field, is that your fans are stick-ons for this year's prize going by everything I saw and did this time round in Germany.
By now you will have been regaled with tales of Rotenburg days and nights, but rest assured that the world at large remains stunned by the notion that a player of the quality of Aurtis Whitley, fresh from embarrassing England's expensive midfield stars, could sit until 4.30 a.m. playing pool with me at Max's smokey bar just a corner-kick away from the Wachtelhof. He turned down Portsmouth at Christmas, but had already received three fresh approaches by the time I missed a black in the jaws of the corner pocket.
Just to get him going, of course.
I can't think of another country at the World Cup where one of its star players would be as comfortable in those surroundings as any number of fans travelling from Port of Spain, Miami, New York or Toronto. Likewise Brent Sancho and Chris Birchall having their ears bent by five charming madmen collectively known as the Soca Charioteers (Ron 'The Deacon', Mark, Andy,
Tony and Ken) over beers in Mario's, the Italian bistro which was central to the Rotenburg lime, the night after the joyous Sweden draw which guaranteed interest right to the death against Paraguay. One of the Charioteers, as if to prove a point, was actually a Jock --Ken Sim having left college in Aberdeen to find a job as an engineer 20 years ago.
Sancho, of course, was well-enough known himself from his days at Dundee, but few could recall him playing quite so magnificently. If there was a prize for the best World Cup story within the squad, he would surely land that too after stepping-in for Andrews at the last minute, having his hair pulled outrageously by Peter Crouch, getting engaged over the 'phone and then plopping that inexplicable own goal past another Dens regular in Kelvin Jack against the relieved South Americans.
But all of the players were taken aback by the size of the Scottish support. Fans were aware that T&T shirts had sold out in Scotland, to the extent that a fresh batch had to be delivered from Trinidad the week before Sweden. And by the time 250 kilted Scots turned up at the Sweden game (numbers possibly even bettered by the time Paraguay came around), it was clear this was no longer just a joke.
On the Thursday of the England match, as I sat with my new TV-6 pals Mike and Caroline (Marlon, as ever, knocking his pan in with actual work), 'phone calls from home kept coming in. "Edinburgh is awash with Trinidad flags and tops," said one. "The punters in the Glasgow bars all have their faces painted red and black," said another. "It's Time to Lime," read a simple text from my little brother Calum.
If Rotenburg has established formal links with Port of Spain thanks to George Maxwell Davies' visit (schoolchildren attending Carnival, the town's World Cup T&T organiser extending her contract to develop commercial and educational links and mein hostess Heidi predicting a black baby boom in nine months' time), the goodwill from Scotland must be every bit as lasting.
Obviously, Latapy will be back after his brief break at home in Portugal. And however the negotiations with Jack Warner play out over his taking up Beenhakker's reins, he has his first formal job in coaching to get stuck into with Premier league Falkirk. We very much look forward to having some of our new-found cousins visit for some of their games come the new season.
Perhaps the only sad note we definitely share was the lack of playing time given to Latapy. Only in Scotland or Portugal could fans even begin to appreciate the respect in which Russell is held back home. But by the time his 26 minutes had come and gone against Paraguay, the rest of the world certainly knew T&T could play--not just defend like demons as they had done so valiantly against Sweden.
In the run-up to that quite special World Cup debut, one he will start to remember for the right reasons as time goes by, Latapy had let slip some choice phrases in the Wachtelhof which he will be glad were never relayed via the press. The frustration of being unable to add to Beenhakker's safety-first tactics was total, but in the long-run, he will benefit from having held his tongue.
Above all, the sight of 30,000 or more Germans and World Cup tourists in Kaiserslautern for the final match, almost all decked out in red-and-black tops and face paint, will surely live with him forever. What had started as a jocular wave of support off the Arctic coast had quickly mushroomed into genuine belief right across Germany.
Capturing the hearts of the football world was something Dwight Yorke might consider a touch patronising, given his achievements in the game with Manchester United. He hinted at as much to me in the mixed zone that last night when he suggested he would have swapped all the plaudits in the world for a single goal, far less a Group B victory.
But with a United Nations of support sweeping over the Fritz Walter Stadium that night, the reality is T&T did achieve something quite considerable in Germany. The only question now is whether the traditional in-fighting can be kept at bay, so Latapy or whoever joins him in leading the team towards South Africa four years hence can have a chance of repeating the old alchemist Beenhakker's trick.
For now, though, I prefer to think back to the night the steelbands filled the main Lutheran church in Rotenburg. Or the day 20,000 turned up in Hamburg to watch a nothing friendly against third division side St-Pauli, the first sign that T&T's eternal underdogs were onto something in this event. Or the night 5,000 curious townsfolk turned up to watch the team's first open training session.
That and Mario's, where Rodney from Toronto finally made sense of the word "lime" for me. "Take a lime, put it on the counter, and it take a long time to go baaad", he said. I got it instantly, the same with Jonesy, the immigration officer from Tobago airport who told me I wouldn't need papers, I wouldn't even need money or clothes. "Just make sure you don't fall into the sea," he laughed.
When Mario's shut, a tap of a hotel key sufficed for Max's to stay open until 8 a.m. So the laughs came a-plenty, even if some of the wives felt they had been abandoned 30 miles away outside Bremen without even a driver to take them into town. As they sipped plastic cups of beer and nibbled at chopped bratwurst with ketchup in the main Rotenburg square the night after the Sweden result, I knew we were with the good people of this World Cup, and a very far cry indeed from the awful WAGs ('wives and girlfriends') of the England team, with their appalling champagne and strawberry manners.
Against that backdrop, who could blame Warner for calling in a few Hilton favours to get the team nestled away in their secluded match-day hotel by the stadium in Nuremburg, leaving England to sweat in the downtown Meridien, complete with thousands of Trinis keeping the players up half the night. We certainly weren't complaining when the only sleeping berth we could find on the night train back north to Rotenburg was in the mail-car at the back.
There's an old line in Scottish literature, learn to see yersels as ithers see you. It's a pretty straightforward message, one the Trinis I joined on the eight-hour bus ride to Kaiserslautern also grasped as if by birthright. Bizarrely, as I went through French airport security on Monday, on personal business, there was music coming out of my ruck-sack in the scanner.
I checked, and the laptop was off, likewise the MP3 player. I stood looking at the bag for a few moments, listening to the frantic beat coming out of it. And then it hit me. The ex-tempo session we'd done on the last
30 miles into Kaiserslautern. It was on my interview recorder, and it had gone off by accident in the machine. I couldn't help laughing at my one and only attempt at freestyle improvisation. Fortunately, so did "Ambassador" Mike and Peter and the boys on the bus. I just hope not too many of them missed their flight back to Trinidad the next morning, as I gather some did...
For me now, it's back to the day job in Scotland. Still wearing the Trini wrist-band Caroline gave me and which, with Jody (Roddy III), we've decided to wear each day right through to the final on July 9. It's even easier for him seeing as his mother, on holiday in Tobago during the World Cup and initially unaware of where he was, ended up buying a house on the that island.
Birchall will be jealous, despite his million-dollar bounty!
It really was that sort of trip, nothing was too difficult to pull off. Jody still can't believe your president sat posing for pictures with his wife in the Wachtelhof. Exclusively. Or that Beenhakker took on the Messiah's stance in a giant bed of Rotenburg flowers arranged in the form of your national flag. With me helping to steady the ladder he was perched on top of.
When Latapy and I sit down for dinner with the families to go over the work we did together out in Germany, I'll be fascinated to learn what he then takes from his seven weeks on the road with the Soca Warriors. I hope those 26 minutes of magic in a group you never stood a hope in Hell of qualifying from come out on top. Ask any Scot about Archie Gemmill's goal in the 3-2 win over losing finalists Holland that year in Argentina, and you'll know exactly what I mean by that remark.
But what I will take from my time as an honorary Soca Warrior is pretty clear. And that I promise to tell you one-by-one over an orchard of lime in February at Carnival time. Whatever anguish the World Cup might have cost us Scots in the past, I can tell you, it's nothing compared to the sheer unbridled joy that was liming with the boys in Rotenburg this summer.
For that, we thank you all.
Poll