Warriors fight for Caribbean legacy today
By Lasana Liburd (Wired868.com)
There has never been a final Caribbean Cup football tournament without the Trinidad and Tobago national senior team. The “Soca Warriors” should have to work hard to retain that legacy from 6 pm today when they face Cuba in the last qualifying match of a four-team round robin group at the Dwight Yorke Stadium in Bacolet, Tobago.
If they are lucky, the Warriors would have confirmed their progress to next month’s Caribbean Cup finals in Antigua and Barbuda without kicking a ball. Should St Vincent and the Grenadines draw or lose against Suriname in an earlier encounter from 4 pm at the same venue, Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba would both advance automatically.
A surprise Surinamese triumph would be an uncharacteristic gift for Trinidad and Tobago’s interim coach Hutson “Barber” Charles and his men.
From financial woes due to infighting with the Sport Ministry to Tropical Storm Rafael, the Warriors have been doing things the hard way since former Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) special advisor Jack Warner’s disgraceful exit from the game.
Warner’s departure coincided with the disappearance of the TTFF’s 2014 World Cup television rights money, a halt on funding from FIFA—due to Warner’s role in Haiti’s supposedly missing financial aid money—and a hostile relationship with Sport Minister Anil Roberts and his Permanent Secretary Ashwin Creed.
It is a chain of events that led the Warriors here; at the brink of elimination from a Caribbean tournament that it dominated, just over a decade ago.
Read more:
http://www.wired868.com/2012/11/18/warriors-fight-for-caribbean-legacy-today/
