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Offline Trini _2026

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Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« on: September 04, 2010, 03:11:57 AM »
Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
http://www.tribalfootball.com/antigua-barbuda%E2%80%99s-barracuda-fc-join-usl-868531

Antigua & Barbuda’s first professional football club, Barracuda FC, have been accepted into the USL (United Soccer League) for the 2011/12 season.

The history-making announcement brought the USL and Antigua & Barbuda Football Association together to produce a positive outcome for soccer in the region.

USL CEO Alec Papadakis said, ”This is yet another positive step forward in the growth of the USL First Division for 2011. Coupled with our announcement of Orlando as a 2011 expansion team, the addition of Barracuda FC continues USL’s positive momentum with more news to come.

“What makes this even more exciting is the overall effect on the region that USL expansion in the Caribbean will have,” Papadakis continued.

“Not only does it increase the profile of soccer throughout the region, but the addition of Barracuda FC creates a natural geographic rival for the Puerto Rico Islanders, one of USL’s most exciting and accomplished teams, as well as opening the door for other Caribbean clubs to join the USL First Division.

“We also look forward to working with Gordon Derrick and Bryan Hamilton, Barracuda FC’s Technical Director, to develop soccer opportunities for all ages on this beautiful island, not only at the professional level, but for the boys and girls youth and developmental players as well.”
« Last Edit: September 04, 2010, 06:58:11 PM by Trini _2014 »
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Offline Flex

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2010, 04:33:01 AM »
You have 1 hour to post your source, if not, your post will be deleted.
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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2010, 06:22:21 AM »
This isn't exactly a scoop! When T&T played Antigua & Barbuda back in August, this was known. In fact the A&B team was virtually the Barracudas. I also heard there may be a team from Jamaica entering and I know there has been contact between the USL and people in Trinidad.

It makes sense because if U.S. teams are going to travel to Peurto Rico, they could then play other Caribbean teams in the following 10 days.

Offline Sam

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2010, 06:45:24 AM »
This isn't exactly a scoop! When T&T played Antigua & Barbuda back in August, this was known. In fact the A&B team was virtually the Barracudas. I also heard there may be a team from Jamaica entering and I know there has been contact between the USL and people in Trinidad.

It makes sense because if U.S. teams are going to travel to Peurto Rico, they could then play other Caribbean teams in the following 10 days.

Trinidad teams can't even afford to go to Tobago to play Tobago United how will they managed to travel to the US.

FC SouthEnd can't even afford to travel to POS to play Jabloteh.

Not only that, but half de team will not get VISA's, remember Andre Toussaint and some under 20 T&T ballers got blanked de other day.
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Offline Sam

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2010, 07:11:20 AM »
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Offline Football supporter

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #5 on: September 04, 2010, 07:25:04 AM »




This isn't exactly a scoop! When T&T played Antigua & Barbuda back in August, this was known. In fact the A&B team was virtually the Barracudas. I also heard there may be a team from Jamaica entering and I know there has been contact between the USL and people in Trinidad.

It makes sense because if U.S. teams are going to travel to Peurto Rico, they could then play other Caribbean teams in the following 10 days.

Trinidad teams can't even afford to go to Tobago to play Tobago United how will they managed to travel to the US.

FC SouthEnd can't even afford to travel to POS to play Jabloteh.

Not only that, but half de team will not get VISA's, remember Andre Toussaint and some under 20 T&T ballers got blanked de other day.

Playing in USL has a whole different financial attraction. Sponsors in Trini don't see the value in supporting football because attendances are too low and tv coverage is poor. Playing in the USL will hopefully generate more interest as matches will be shown across the Caribbean and U.S.A. and possibly Europe. A Trini team may attract support from the nation, especially those who are disillusioned with the national team. Also, there would need to be a higher standard of player, so the football should be more attractive. As for visas etc, that would be confirmed before a player signed for the club.

I think it could really galvanise Trini football supporters and create real interest. It would, in effect, be a team representing T&T without the constaints of nationality and interference from TTFF.

Offline Bakes

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #6 on: September 04, 2010, 09:06:41 AM »
I think it would be a phenomenal move for both the USL and the Caribbean teams, but travel logistics and cost will continue to be hindrances.  All well and good for people to say "yeah, Pro League should look into that" but remember you still need to line up visas for your players and coaches to travel into the US.  USL teams also have financial issues of their own, say nothing of other internal conflicts like last year when they had to cease operations to deal with a rift among members.  I'm sure many of these teams don't have the budget to be making more than one or two trips to the caribbean a season, if that.  Even if you coordinate it so that they play all the caribbean teams in one stretch... you still talking about flight and accommodation for about 30 people each leg.

Offline Tenorsaw

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2010, 09:22:51 AM »
Shows the fecklessness of the CFU.  There should have been attempts to revive the Caribbean professional league a while ago.  Now USL expanding in our own backyard.

Offline Blue

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2010, 11:23:26 AM »
Jus curious - how does this work with visa requirements, tax implications etc?

Offline saga pinto

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #9 on: September 04, 2010, 02:46:48 PM »
This isn't exactly a scoop! When T&T played Antigua & Barbuda back in August, this was known. In fact the A&B team was virtually the Barracudas. I also heard there may be a team from Jamaica entering and I know there has been contact between the USL and people in Trinidad.

It makes sense because if U.S. teams are going to travel to Peurto Rico, they could then play other Caribbean teams in the following 10 days.

Trinidad teams can't even afford to go to Tobago to play Tobago United how will they managed to travel to the US.

FC SouthEnd can't even afford to travel to POS to play Jabloteh.

Not only that, but half de team will not get VISA's, remember Andre Toussaint and some under 20 T&T ballers got blanked de other day.


F**king disgraceful with all this money we have floating around absolutely disgusting and I eh no what else to say.....

Offline spideybuff

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #10 on: September 06, 2010, 07:45:54 AM »
What money is that? Ent Dooks say the treasury empty?
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Offline Bianconeri

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USL A- League....Antigua have a side??? how that working ???
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2011, 10:04:47 PM »
recently noticed that Antigua has a team in the A-league....... ??? ??? ???


how that one happen??
n what is the criteria for entry into the A-League??
supposedly Jamaica and Trini have d bess leagues in caribbean...so...
jus curious?

Offline theworm2345

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Re: USL A- League....Antigua have a side??? how that working ???
« Reply #12 on: May 17, 2011, 11:15:44 PM »
The team is doing pretty well too.  Its really basically just the Antigua and Barbuda national team (at least their home-based players) with a couple of others.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2011, 11:17:38 PM by theworm2345 »

Offline fish

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #13 on: May 19, 2011, 07:35:33 AM »
Traveling go be a real scene though

Offline Deeks

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #14 on: May 19, 2011, 07:40:25 AM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.

Offline ZANDOLIE

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #15 on: May 19, 2011, 08:29:14 AM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.
May be feasible, maybe not. But this is the kind of smart innovative thinking that is lacking within the league fraternity. They had some good ideas but can't seem to develop commercial viability. They can't even get their act together and develop a base in their own communities. Only N.E. Stars making a concerted public effort to get things going.
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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #16 on: May 19, 2011, 12:00:29 PM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.

You know what..thats an interesting idea. If there was a rail link between the two countries this could def. be feasible.
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Offline Deeks

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #17 on: May 19, 2011, 07:06:31 PM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.

You know what..thats an interesting idea. If there was a rail link between the two countries this could def. be feasible.

I don't know about rail link between TT and Ven. But a ferry service between the Gulf of Paria is more feasible than rail. We are close to Caracas. Now I don't know if they will allow us to start in the Div.1. They may want the team to start D2. Well so what. Give it a try. If it don't work out, well at least you tried. But I think that is something that a group of investers should think about. Probably have the U23 and a couple overage players. The can play under any name. here are a few samples, FC Puerta Espana, Cruz Trinidad, Cruz Trinbago, FC Trinbago, Unido Trinbago, Atletico Trinbago, Cobo Trinbago.

Offline royal

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #18 on: May 19, 2011, 08:48:55 PM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.

You know what..thats an interesting idea. If there was a rail link between the two countries this could def. be feasible.

I don't know about rail link between TT and Ven. But a ferry service between the Gulf of Paria is more feasible than rail. We are close to Caracas. Now I don't know if they will allow us to start in the Div.1. They may want the team to start D2. Well so what. Give it a try. If it don't work out, well at least you tried. But I think that is something that a group of investers should think about. Probably have the U23 and a couple overage players. The can play under any name. here are a few samples, FC Puerta Espana, Cruz Trinidad, Cruz Trinbago, FC Trinbago, Unido Trinbago, Atletico Trinbago, Cobo Trinbago.


I not sure if they still have it but there was a ferry service between Trinidad and Venezuela from Chagaramus.The service use to be on a Tuesday and Thursday.A basketball club was looking at this same possiblity.

Offline royal

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #19 on: May 19, 2011, 08:51:52 PM »
This isn't exactly a scoop! When T&T played Antigua & Barbuda back in August, this was known. In fact the A&B team was virtually the Barracudas. I also heard there may be a team from Jamaica entering and I know there has been contact between the USL and people in Trinidad.

It makes sense because if U.S. teams are going to travel to Peurto Rico, they could then play other Caribbean teams in the following 10 days.

A USL official told me late last year Trinidad is too far south and they'll have to get special permission either Concacaf or CFU,I can't remember which one to have a Trinidad team in USL.

Offline Deeks

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #20 on: May 19, 2011, 09:17:46 PM »
I can't see why they can't get permission from Cfu or Concacaf. The only impediment will be jack or his henchmen. Look Canadian teams have been playing football in the US for decades. What about swansea and cardiff. PR Islanders. Yes PR is acommonwealth of the US, but the have seperate association and plays in all FIFA santioned tournament.

Offline royal

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #21 on: May 19, 2011, 09:45:20 PM »
I can't see why they can't get permission from Cfu or Concacaf. The only impediment will be jack or his henchmen. Look Canadian teams have been playing football in the US for decades. What about swansea and cardiff. PR Islanders. Yes PR is acommonwealth of the US, but the have seperate association and plays in all FIFA santioned tournament.

ah dunno if its a boundary line ting (territorial) with the USL and some agreement with CFU or Concacaf.They need special permission for teams from the southern Caribbean.

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Re: Antigua & Barbuda’s Barracuda FC join USL
« Reply #22 on: May 20, 2011, 10:37:26 AM »
Travel logistics will be a problem. maybe a TT team can try the Venezuela league. They have decent teams and some good stadiums.

You know what..thats an interesting idea. If there was a rail link between the two countries this could def. be feasible.

I don't know about rail link between TT and Ven. But a ferry service between the Gulf of Paria is more feasible than rail. We are close to Caracas. Now I don't know if they will allow us to start in the Div.1. They may want the team to start D2. Well so what. Give it a try. If it don't work out, well at least you tried. But I think that is something that a group of investers should think about. Probably have the U23 and a couple overage players. The can play under any name. here are a few samples, FC Puerta Espana, Cruz Trinidad, Cruz Trinbago, FC Trinbago, Unido Trinbago, Atletico Trinbago, Cobo Trinbago.

Yeah but you still have to get to the city you're playing in once you cross the Gulf of Paria...unless those Ferry's can carry buses.
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Played 26, lost 26: The story of Antigua Barracuda's record-breaking season
« Reply #23 on: April 07, 2018, 06:55:19 AM »
Played 26, lost 26: The story of Antigua Barracuda's record-breaking season
By Niall McVeigh, The Guardian.


The USL side lost every game of the 2013 season, based in a hotel and playing every game away, but their fighting spirit earned their opponents’ respect.

Football, as the saying goes, is a results business and teams are prepared to rip up blueprints and burn through personnel in order to get them.

Losing runs can act like a virus, stripping confidence and cohesion from even the most stable side, but one way or another they end eventually – most of the time.

In 2013 Antigua Barracuda played 26 matches in the United Soccer League (USL) – then the third tier in the US – and lost them all. It was the club’s third and last full season, fleeting even by the standards of North America’s unstable development leagues. They are one of only a handful of professional sides to finish a season without a single point but, more than anything else, theirs is a tale of wasted potential.

The “Cudas” were Antigua and Barbuda’s first full-time professional team, founded by the Caribbean nation’s FA with the aim of developing national team players and bringing crowds back to the Sticky Wicket, the stadium forever associated with the infamous fraudster Allen Stanford.

In their first season the team won nine games and Gordon Derrick, then head of the FA, warned visiting fans they “may not want to return home – after all, Antigua is the last stop before heaven”.

In 2012 the ambitious project was brought crashing to earth. The team won five league games and were left isolated as sister teams to Sevilla and River Plate, based in Puerto Rico, fell by the wayside. Opponents were no longer willing to travel thousands of miles to play in front of dwindling crowds. The USL proposed a drastic course of action – the team would relocate to the mainland and play all of the next season’s matches away from home.

By the time Adrian Whitbread took over as manager in June 2013, midway through the summertime season, they were pointless, penniless and fighting to complete their fixtures. Whitbread, a former Premier League player with Swindon and West Ham, sensed problems at his first training session when none of the players knew who he was. It turned out to be one of the team’s better days – at least they had somewhere to train.

The team had no home, save for a modest hotel in Tampa, Florida. The new manager had to lean on his own contacts, and upcoming opponents, to find training facilities. When there were no other options the squad would resort to a kickabout in the hotel car park. This was in a division that included Orlando City, a team who would join MLS and sign Kaká a year later. The Barracuda put a season-high two goals past them in an early fixture – but conceded seven.

Before his first fixture in charge, at the Richmond Kickers, Whitbread found out his team would not be flying to Virginia. Instead the team’s entire personnel – 18 players and four backroom staff – squeezed into minivans for the 10-hour journey. They lost 4-0, climbed back into the minivans and drove through the night to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After waiting for hours at the hotel to check in they lost their next game 3-1, reaching the halfway point in the season without a point.

Beyond these extraordinary day‑to-day challenges the long-term outlook was bleak. “The players hadn’t been paid for God knows how many months,” Whitbread says. “Some left because they needed to send money back to their families. I tried to get new players in but a lot of them didn’t like what they saw straight away.” Even the team physio walked away, while in one particularly embarrassing episode the squad had to walk from their hotel to a game in LA when they couldn’t afford hire cars. “After a while,” Whitbread admits, “you want a home game just so you can sleep in your own bed. I knew there was no way the team was going to survive.”

The coach tried to embrace the challenge regardless but often had to dip into his own pocket to cover costs and ended up joining the players in waiting patiently to be reimbursed. The Barracuda players, physically exhausted after a season of long road trips and unsure if they would ever get paid, would have been forgiven for losing interest in results, but George Dublin, the captain, insists that was never an issue. “As a player, every game you go into you want to get a win. There were games we thought we should have won – competing, ahead after 80-something minutes, but by the 90th minute we had lost.”

Dublin accepts that off-field issues meant the team were fighting a losing battle. “We were on the road all the time, sleeping in hotels, driving for hours,” he says. “Plus we had families to support. We all tried to win and wanted to win games but you get to a point – 16, 17 losses in a row – you realise it’s not ever going to go right.”

The team never got the necessary result to avoid an unwanted place in history but two weeks before their final fixture Whitbread and his players finally got paid. It was a happy ending of sorts and, looking back nearly five years later, both the coach and captain are philosophical. “I will never take it as a negative,” says Whitbread, who is now working at Barnet in League Two. “Going through those struggles has made me stronger and wiser.”

The side’s sense of togetherness helped the margins of defeat grow slimmer and earned their opponents’ admiration and respect. “The players stuck together and wanted to better themselves. Their spirit was unquestionable,” Whitbread adds. “When word got around about what was going on, the other teams couldn’t believe the spirit we had. After a game in Arizona [a 1-0 defeat to Phoenix FC] the home fans even invited the players to have a beer with them.”

The project at least achieved one objective: improving the national team. In 2012 Antigua and Barbuda progressed to the second round of Concacaf World Cup qualifying, narrowly lost their first competitive matches against the USA and broke into the world’s top 100. For a nation with a population similar to Andorra it was a striking achievement.

That legacy has sadly been overshadowed by Derrick’s six-year suspension from football, handed down by Fifa’s ethics committee last September.

When asked to explain Antigua Barracuda’s nosedive into the history books, Dublin and Whitbread pinpoint the financial restraints that so often affect sport in the Caribbean. “A lot of these teams really do run on a shoestring budget,” Whitbread says.

As part of the national team that broke new ground Dublin had hoped sponsors would move in to back the club side financially. Instead they were left high and dry – but there are lessons to be learned from their slow decline. “It was definitely difficult,” says Dublin. “But it’s something we all learned from – something that was meant to happen. There is nothing that’s perfect in the world. I still think the team was a good idea but when people invest in Caribbean football they want instant results.” They are not the only ones.

 

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