For some time now the signs have been staring us in the face but we were not ready to accept the fact that our football was going nowhere fast.
In my last column, I had noted that in the past Guyana would not have been mentioned in the same breath as T&T where football was concerned, but times have certainly changed. We hear football pundits saying that the gap between teams in this area has closed considerably but what that seems to mean is that other countries have improved and are getting closer to the standard of Jamaica and T&T, more so T&T, but our team does not seem to be getting closer to the Mexicans, Americans or Costa Ricans in this our CONCACAF zone.
I cannot remember Guyana ever beating T&T before now and I am referring to as far back as the 50s in the days of Joey Gonsalves, Squeekie Hinds, Conrad Braithwaite, Shay Seymour and many others too numerous to mention. We would not have given Guyana a ghost of a chance against any T&T team back then.
I was able to listen to only a few minutes of the game while doing some entertaining at home but heard when the score was 1-0 in favour of Guyana. I was surprised but I thought that there was enough time left in the game for T&T to at least gain a point from a draw if not a win.
To my further surprise, a friend of mine called out to inform me that Guyana had scored again and I then realised that things were more serious than I had thought. I tried to work out how Guyana could be leading our strong, mostly foreign-based stars by two goals and was hoping for a miracle – which never happened.
The writing has indeed been on the wall for some time now, going back to the non-payment of monies owed to the Warriors after the 2006 World Cup and the absence of a development plan for our football. Our top officials at that time only thought it important to organise tournaments in T&T, where lots of money was collected, while our main adviser ensured we had TV rights for all World Cup finals. A development plan was not important as long as foreign-based players and a foreign coach were brought in two or three months ahead of a tournament. The important thing was dollars, even to the point where safety was abandoned when tickets were over-sold for that well known game in 1990. Dollars not cents was the important factor, not the players or the football public.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see the game on television before doing this column as I would have been better able to assess the performance of Mr Pfister’s team. My next column will be an assessment of the team’s performances in both the away and home games.
I hope the officials of the T&TFF, together with some of the more knowledgeable people in the game, can come up with a plan to resurrect our football which, at this point in time, needs all the help it can possibly get.
There is need for change from top to bottom and I hope that the recent loss is a wake-up call for the present hierarchy.