Question: How was football funded prior to 2000? It seems that we had many more overseas friendlies, but who paid? I hear that inter island travel used to be real cheap using the old puddle jumpers, which must have made life so much easier.
Now we have a disadvantage in the Caribbean as every away game involves expensive flights. Guyana can take a bus to Suriname or Venezuela. Panama can take a bus to Costa Rica, Colombia or even Nicaragua.
El Salvador can take a bus to Nicaragua, Honduras or Guatemala.
Admittedly, you don't want to play the same teams continuously, but for pretty much the same cost as our teams going to Tobago, Central American teams can get a decent game. Imagine Honduras could travel to El Salvador, then host Guatemala in the same FIFA break and it would cost next to nothing. Then they could have one big spend by flying to Colombia (much cheaper than we can) and they're good to go for WC18 qualifiers.
Not only can we not afford to do the same, why would El Salvador spend the money to come to T&T when they can go to Mexico or Ecuador for less money?
England would always use Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland for warm ups back in the day (before they arrogantly decided that they were too good for the "lesser" teams). And even games vs Holland, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland were coach trips where they would cross by ferry to Europe. Of course now they fly everywhere as they have pots of money.
But it seems to me that our football is hampered by our location and island status.