Gopaul luck ain’t seepaul luck

There is no short­age of in­ter­na­tion­al cognoscen­ti of­fer­ing World Cup analy­sis for tour­na­ment fol­low­ers to wade through so you do not need mine. I will state the ob­vi­ous, though – 2026 is the most com­mer­cial­ized, mon­e­tized and politi­cized World Cup ever. If you are lucky, you have ac­cess to a paid stream­ing ser­vice, a visa to en­ter one of the host coun­tries, or a high priced tick­et to watch a match live. If not, FI­FA has adopt­ed a Pon­tius Pi­late stance and washed its hands of you and your prob­lems. FI­FA claims “foot­ball unites the world and brings peo­ple to­geth­er to cel­e­brate the beau­ti­ful game”. But in 2026, World Cup foot­ball – which should be freely avail­able to or­di­nary work­ing peo­ple via pub­lic tele­vi­sion, easy en­try in­to host coun­tries and rea­son­ably priced tick­ets – is now a com­mod­i­ty with re­strict­ed ac­cess.

Tick­et prices aside, do­mes­tic pol­i­tics and geopol­i­tics have ir­re­triev­ably tar­nished the tour­na­ment, over which FI­FA has lost con­trol, aban­don­ing Iran and the So­ma­li ref­er­ee in the process. From hu­man rights and trade union protests in Mex­i­co to mul­ti­ple race, se­cu­ri­ty and visa con­tro­ver­sies in Cana­da and USA, World Cup 2026 will be re­mem­bered for all the wrong rea­sons. FI­FA is now a deeply dis­liked or­ga­ni­za­tion across the globe and one gets the sense that po­lit­i­cal ac­tion to reign it in and trans­form it would be in­ter­na­tion­al­ly pop­u­lar. If you agree with that as­sess­ment I di­rect you to British hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tion FairSquare’s re­boot­fi­fa.com web­site. Fol­low the prompts and your con­science to force change on FI­FA.

As the World Cup en­ters Week 2, we see clear­ly there are no “small” sides in the tour­na­ment, but it is al­so use­ful for us to fo­cus on the fact that Trinidad and To­ba­go (FI­FA rank­ing 102) has played its own World Cup of sorts un­der the tute­lage of Derek King. Since his ap­point­ment last month as head coach on a one year con­tract (af­ter many years as a peren­ni­al as­sis­tant) King has led the na­tion­al team on a whirl­wind glob­al tour of high­er ranked op­po­nents, fac­ing Bo­livia (rank­ing 77), Venezuela (rank­ing 49), Gabon (rank­ing 86), Rus­sia (rank­ing 35), and South Ko­rea (rank­ing 25). Our record in these match­es is 5 lost, 0 drawn, 0 won, 2 goals scored, 13 goals con­ced­ed.

The the­o­ry held by many is that a play­er or team im­proves by play­ing su­pe­ri­or op­po­nents. In prin­ci­ple this works. It ex­pos­es flaws, of­ten bru­tal­ly; it places new de­mands on play­ers and coach­es; and it forces adap­ta­tion to a high­er lev­el. But “licks” from bet­ter teams do not mag­i­cal­ly see a play­er or team rise to “greater heights”. In ed­u­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy the the­o­ry called “the zone of prox­i­mal de­vel­op­ment” is a con­cept that de­scribes the gap be­tween what a learn­er (read “play­er” or “team”) can do in­de­pen­dent­ly and what they can achieve with guid­ance from a more knowl­edge­able per­son, such as a teacher or peer (read “coach” or “op­po­nent”). It rep­re­sents the op­ti­mal area for learn­ing (read “tech­in­cal/tac­ti­cal and ex­pe­ri­en­tial deficit”), where tasks (read “match­es”) are chal­leng­ing enough to re­quire as­sis­tance (read “coach­ing”) but not so dif­fi­cult that they cause frus­tra­tion. “Play­ing up” does help with de­vel­op­ment. But there is a nec­es­sary caveat. The the­o­ry is good if “su­pe­ri­or op­po­nent” means “ap­pro­pri­ate­ly chal­leng­ing” op­po­nent. If it means “throw them in the deep end with no arm bands”, a play­er or team will drown more than swim. If the dif­fer­ence be­tween the low­er and high­er lev­els is too great, then what is cre­at­ed is not growth but anx­i­ety, and what is learned is in­evitable de­feat. If the nec­es­sary foun­da­tion has gaps, high­er learn­ing is made ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult, if not im­pos­si­ble. Af­ter all, does a Stan­dard 1 stu­dent au­to­mat­i­cal­ly im­prove while re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing the Stan­dard 4 ex­am­i­na­tion? You can­not an­a­lyze Shake­speare if you can­not de­code his prose.

Ed­u­ca­tion psy­chol­o­gy of­fers a rea­son­able so­lu­tion – the con­cept of “pro­gres­sive over­load”, that is, play­ing bet­ter teams that are with­in reach and grad­u­al­ly im­prov­ing the fac­tor of dif­fi­cul­ty. All of this is to say it is good for TTFA to se­cure match­es against high­er ranked op­po­nents but se­ri­ous ques­tions re­gard­ing the lev­el of op­po­nent arise. Lit­tle in the per­for­mances and noth­ing in the re­sults of our match­es un­der King leads me to be­lieve they pro­duced long term val­ue for our na­tion­al team. “Licks doh kill and licks does cool”, in­deed, but I sug­gest that TTFA choose its op­po­nents more care­ful­ly, and ex­plain to its match pro­mot­er that friend­lies against teams that are not ranked fifty to sev­en­ty places above the So­ca War­riors would do more for the psy­che of our team, the As­so­ci­a­tion and the na­tion than “glam­our” fix­tures that are “sure loss­es” to “big sides”. Enig­mat­i­cal­ly, King’s side is sched­uled to play Louisville City FC in USA on 25 Ju­ly. The risk in tak­ing on such a match ev­i­dent­ly es­capes TTFA and King. Af­ter all those loss­es in “big” match­es, we shall see if our luck changes and if we could man­age to beat a US sec­ond di­vi­sion club side.

The most as­ton­ish­ing de­vel­op­ment in lo­cal foot­ball oc­curred last week. I re­fer to the re­mark­able in­ter­ven­tion by Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport, David Nakhid, in the sad saga of World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match fees be­ing owed to play­ers by TTFA since Oc­to­ber 2025. On­line mag­a­zine Wired 868 Vol­ley re­port­ed on com­ments made by Nakhid, which bear ex­ten­sive quot­ing be­cause they have gone un­re­port­ed in the lega­cy me­dia. Nakhid said, “The TTFA mem­ber­ship should be ask­ing for ac­count­abil­i­ty from the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive on this. The gov­ern­ment can­not do any­thing to help. The TTFA is a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion and FI­FA Pres­i­dent, In­fan­ti­no, is al­ways very quick to call for ‘nor­mal­i­sa­tion’ in so-called Third World coun­tries.” Ref­er­enc­ing TTFA’s very re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence with FI­FA’s “nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee” (2020-2024) Nakhid con­tin­ued, “For me, nor­mal­i­sa­tion had an im­pact for the worse – be­cause it was four or five wast­ed years. It was just put in place to keep In­fan­ti­no with a vote, and aid his dis­gust­ing colo­nial­ist mind­set. He (In­fan­ti­no) wasn’t sure if the peo­ple who won the (TTFA) elec­tion (in late 2019) were loy­al to him, so he used that (nor­mal­i­sa­tion) to keep us in check. We have had bad FI­FA pres­i­dents be­fore, but he is the worst…So, it is up to the foot­ball stake­hold­ers to ad­dress this. Don’t sell out the coun­try and your ath­letes for treats and trips. If they do, then we get what we de­serve.”

Well! Love him or hate him, one must agree Nakhid’s com­ments are un­prece­dent­ed. Nev­er be­fore has a Min­istry of Sport of­fi­cial of­fered such an un­var­nished opin­ion on in­ter­nal TTFA mat­ters or on the foot­ball over­lords to whom TTFA of­fi­cials owe their po­lit­i­cal ex­is­tence and, dare I say, whose ring they kiss. I was a mem­ber of the Unit­ed TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion that suf­fered FI­FA’s grotesque coup in ear­ly 2020 and Nakhid’s opin­ion on In­fan­ti­no and FI­FA’s ac­tion echoes ours then. The Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary fin­ished with a flour­ish, say­ing “Pro­fes­sion­al sport is for elite peo­ple, whether they be play­ers, coach­es or ad­min­is­tra­tors. They have to be elite thinkers who think out of the box and who have a lot of in­tegri­ty…If you put a bunch of peo­ple with no in­tel­li­gence or low in­tel­li­gence to run your as­so­ci­a­tion…you are go­ing to have stag­na­tion and poor re­sults and play­ers who are fed up and frus­trat­ed”. Hard words.

In the last decade FI­FA has im­posed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in the fol­low­ing coun­tries: Benin, Brunei, Chad, El Sal­vador, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Hon­duras, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Pak­istan, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Venezuela, Zam­bia and Zim­bab­we – ba­si­cal­ly “small” so called “Third World” coun­tries. The longest tenure (four years) was in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The rea­sons usu­al­ly ad­vanced for this ex­treme ac­tion are as­so­ci­a­tion debt, cor­rup­tion, gov­ern­ment “in­ter­fer­ence”, in­ter­nal wran­gling, re­sort to lo­cal courts, statute non-com­pli­ance, and failed elec­tions. Yet, in 2019 the Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion of Ire­land (FAI) was USD 72 mil­lion in the hole and beg­ging the Irish gov­ern­ment for a loan to stay afloat, while TTFA was USD14 mil­lion in debt. FI­FA nev­er in­ter­vened in Ire­land while it im­posed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee on us. The Irish gov­ern­ment ul­ti­mate­ly bailed out FAI while the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed FI­FA’s in­va­sion and re­moval of a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion. As our folk wis­dom tells us – Gopaul luck ain’t Seep­aul luck. Ear­li­er this week the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) upped Nakhid’s ante by re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion from TTFA re­gard­ing its ac­count­ing for mil­lions of dol­lars in pub­lic monies giv­en to the As­so­ci­a­tion – a de­par­ture from a long his­to­ry of fi­nan­cial lax­i­ty. He who pays the piper calls the tune and maybe this time Gopaul’s luck will run out. Mean­time, Week 1 is in the books at the World Cup. Bring on Week 2.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.