Last train to a World Cup

“If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

The women saving a point with a late penalty and a 2:2 draw in Tegucigalpa, Honduras last week was more noteworthy than Dwight Yorke’s departure, in my opinion. Yorke’s tenure was terminally compromised by his failure to get the national team into World Cup 2026 but also by his financial requirements, which TTFA cannot independently service and which the government should not absorb given its penurious state, the spike in oil revenue due to the illegal Middle East war that it officially supports notwithstanding. Yorke’s demise was inevitable. But the women – now that was good news. Having fallen behind 2:0 early on despite being clearly the better team, the women staged a remarkable fightback to preserve their chance of advancing to the Concacaf W Championship scheduled for November and December 2026. The tournament serves as the qualifier for the 2027 Women’s World Cup to be staged in Brasil. It is also the qualifying tournament for the 2028 Summer Olympics – two for the price of one, so to speak.

I was impressed, not only by the women’s courage and drive but also by the quality of their play – organised and cohesive, characteristics not always associated with our national teams. Our women’s football is no stranger to ruinous internal strife so the battling Tegucigalpa performance was heartening in that oozed unity and it kept us within touching distance of group leaders El Salvador, who sit on six points from two wins to our four from an equal number of matches. We meet them in the Hasely Crawford on 17 April, needing a win to get to the W Championship. Hopefully, they will wear red on the night.

We just celebrated International Women’s Day, commemorating women’s long struggle for equality. “Working Women’s Day” was first approved at the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen with no fixed celebration date. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the Russian communist leader, declared 8 March as International Women’s Day in 1922 to honour women’s role in the 1917 Russian Revolution, which created the Soviet Union. It was subsequently celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. The United Nations transcended Cold War geopolitics to adopt the day globally in 1977.

Mao Zedong, leader of communist China (1949-1946), once famously said during his country’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), “Women hold up half the sky”, thereby supporting equal treatment for women and their full inclusion into the Chinese economy and production. Mao is both revered and reviled in history. Under his leadership China suffered tens of millions of deaths through famine, political persecution, prison labour, and executions. Yet he is credited with promoting mass literacy, women’s rights, basic healthcare, education, increased life expectancy and transforming China from a semi-colonial backwater racked by disease and civil war into a modern State. On that foundation China has emerged as a global super power.

Diametrically opposed on the ideological spectrum, Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first female Prime Minister (1979-1990), was known for her strong conservative policies and her tough anti-communism. Labelled the “Iron Lady” for her uncompromising leadership style, in the 1980s she oversaw the introduction of neoliberal policies into Great Britain and the implementation of anti-worker laws, including restrictions on strike action, which significantly weakened trade unions. The quotation above expresses her opinion on the relative capacities for “getting things done” of the male and female of our species – give the job to a woman was her view.

Polar opposites, Mao and Thatcher agreed on the inherent capacity of women to perform and to achieve even if, in her inimitable style, Thatcher did not merely proclaim female equality, going beyond that to claim greater female effectiveness. Today, the principle of women’s equality has global traction although it is not evenly embodied in the law and culture of all nations.

The women are our last hope to get to a World Cup in this World Cup cycle since all our youth teams and the men have been eliminated. But there is much more riding on the success of this women’s team than mere qualification for the W Championship and the World Cup. Indeed, the positioning and status of women’s football, current and future, as a category of the sport within TTFA is at stake. The Association does not understand this.

In its 2026 budget TTFA allocates TTD 4.5 million to the men and TTD 2.5 million to the women. The men’s U20 gets TTD 1.4 million while the women’s U20 gets TTD .1 million. The men’s U17 receives TTD 3 million to the women’s TTD 1.8 million. And the men’s U15 gets TTD 1.5 million while the women’s U14 gets TTD 1.1 million. In a national teams’ budget of TTD 16 million, the men’s programme has TTD 10.5 million, double that of the women’s. One might argue that the men’s teams and tournaments are more demanding and generate more revenue if one qualifies for a World Cup so they deserve more. I would counter that it is easier for us to get to a women’s World Cup than a men’s and that FIFA has stated its intention to equalise the prize money. The only Trinidad and Tobago national team to have won a match at the six World Cups we have participated in is our U17 women’s team that defeated Chile 1:0 in the 2011 World Cup, which we hosted. Our women’s football, and I refer specifically to women’s grassroots and development programmes, absolutely needs greater and more targeted investment. If I am correct that we have an easier road to a women’s World Cup than a men’s, then it makes eminent good strategic sense to invest shrewdly in the women’s game.

One Concacaf country is dominant in global women’s football – the United States. It won four World Cup and five Olympic titles between 1991 and 2024. Their men’s team looks puny by comparison. This mind boggling success traces back to the 1972 introduction of Title IX – a US federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in any education programme or activity receiving federal financial assistance. It ensures equal and increased athletic opportunities for females. This legislation helped establish and grow women’s football programmes in schools, contributing to the development of elite female players who have achieved unrivalled success on the international stage. It was the generation of girls born under Title IX in the 1970s which won USA’s first World Cup and Olympic titles in the 1990s. While we expend money on teams, the US experience teaches us that it is far more important to invest in development programmes. So questions arise: Will we continue spending on the men twice the amount we spend on the women? And will we adopt a strategic investment approach to women’s football? Our women have the right to “hold up half the sky”.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances.”

Yorke’s confused departure from the helm of the national team has focused attention on our March matches against Bolivia (friendly), and Venezuela and Gabon (FIFA Series). The confusion surrounded three issues, of course – if Yorke left voluntarily or was forced out; if he is owed salary or not, and whether it is a beneficial move from a technical standpoint. TTFA’s Trumpian “regime change” manoeuvre removes the leader but leaves the regime fundamentally intact with the appointment of Derek King as interim head coach. I know Derek well – since he was a young player at Joe Public FC, in fact. He coached my own club, FC Santa Rosa, to the 2018 TT Super League title and I have already wished him “good luck”. I stand ready to be persuaded otherwise but I hold to my oft articulated position that we need an experienced foreign coach. I do not accept the argument that one cannot be secured for less than Yorke’s princely wage.

Bolivia secured a place in FIFA’s inter-continental World Cup playoffs with a sixth-place finish in South American qualifying and will face Suriname in the semi-final on 26 March, which will be played in Guadalupe, Mexico. Should they come through that tie, they will then take on Iraq in the final on 31 March for a place at the 2026 World Cup finals. They will play the friendly – their final preparation match – seriously, with their best team, while we will field a team of school boys and TTPFL players because the match falls outside of FIFA’s next window. The exercise may serve Bolivia’s needs but what it does for us is pure conjecture as we move on to whatever comes next.