Maybe 5% of teh posters on this board are living in denial, or are very poorly educated in football. It beats me how anyone here can claim that USA, Mexico, Costa Rica are T&Ts biggest regional rivals. I would like to know the criteria by which rivalry is claimed. For teh record, Jamaica has only one real rivarly in international football, that honor goes to : T&T. period.
The T&T coach, who has played in many many "caribbean derby" games in the past 20 years acknowledge the fact that Jamaica T&T have the biggest football rivalry in the caribbean...so you are not neccesarily talking for the entire T&T football fraternity.
Even if Latapy is correct that this is the biggest football rivalry in the caribbean... does that make it a rivalry? Or does that just state how poor the situation is in caribbean football? C'mon is de CFU we talking about here, not UEFA.
All this suggests is that the notion of a "rivalry" is subjective. There is a natural rivalry between TnT and Jamaica, but that is more of a factor to Jamaicans than to Trinis. I hate to stereotype, but indulge me for a minute... Jamaicans are naturally "facety" and so everything tends to be done with a bit of exuberance and gusto. Trinis on the other hand are more understated and easygoing in their approach. This is what you mischaracterized as us being "docile" earlier.
This is a double-edged sword though as it means we're too apathetic at times... it shows in our sports and in our politics, we don't support and appreciate our heros, and in other circumstances we put up with too much nonsense until it's way past time to act. So while Jamaica has made many highly-visible contributions to the region and to the world, many Trinis (like me) feel that we've been making our own contributions in a quieter, less self-promoting way. Again, this cuts both ways, but it is what it is.
The bottomline point I'm getting to is that for us the US is a more natural 'rival' because they are the target we're shooting for in almost everything. Not that we're competing with America the country or consider ourselves their equals on the sporting field... and no disrespect to Jamaica, but we eh really concerned too much with "caribbean" rivalries when we see ourselves as being already at the head of the class.