Good news below the radar

“In a world filled with so much bad news, so much sad news, what a re­lief to find this glad news.” (Ka­reen John­ston Tuck­er, Irish po­et)

Fut­sal. Say the word and the re­sponse is a blank stare be­cause the av­er­age per­son ei­ther does not know what it means or what is hap­pen­ing with lo­cal fut­sal. This branch of the foot­ball fam­i­ly is in its in­fan­cy lo­cal­ly and comes to pub­lic at­ten­tion once every four years when Trinidad and To­ba­go par­tic­i­pates in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing. Well, Fut­sal868 (called the Fut­sal As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go un­til this year and a mem­ber of TTFA on­ly since 2015) re­cent­ly an­nounced two ground­break­ing ini­tia­tives, which are fly­ing be­low the pub­lic radar: a Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion-ap­proved fut­sal coach­ing work­shop for sec­ondary school phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers, and the Trin­ba­go Fut­sal In­ter­col – the na­tion’s first ever sec­ondary school fut­sal cham­pi­onship.

In 2004 I was a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion’s Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee un­der the Chair­man­ship of Vice Pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee. I was al­so FI­FA De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer for CON­CA­CAF. Be­tween us we dis­cussed and agreed that Trinidad and To­ba­go should host the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Fut­sal Cham­pi­onship – this in a sport we had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly played. CFU Pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er im­me­di­ate­ly agreed to our tour­na­ment pro­pos­al and we kicked it in­to gear. The pro­posed event pre­sent­ed a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to launch the game here at home. I mo­bi­lized FI­FA re­sources for the project, in­clud­ing FI­FA fut­sal cours­es for coach­es and ref­er­ees, and spe­cial­ized equip­ment. We staged a na­tion­al tour­na­ment in­volv­ing foot­ball clubs and “block” teams across the coun­try to iden­ti­fy tal­ent. And we ap­point­ed Clay­ton Mor­ris and Hut­son Charles as head and as­sis­tant coach re­spec­tive­ly. “Small goal” foot­ball is in­grained in our foot­ball cul­ture and the na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, us­ing fut­sal rules, was a huge suc­cess. The 2004 CFU Fut­sal Cham­pi­onship ab­solute­ly im­posed it­self on the lo­cal pub­lic as our boys dom­i­nat­ed from the out­set. Their in­ven­tive, at­tack­ing play fired the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. The fi­nal was played be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and our eter­nal ri­vals in every­thing, Guyana, at UWI SPEC, a fa­cil­i­ty seat­ing just over two thou­sand spec­ta­tors. On fi­nal night it was filled to the rafters, with a crowd of equal num­ber out­side clam­our­ing for en­try. Our first ever na­tion­al fut­sal team romped to a 5:0 win, pro­vid­ing huge en­ter­tain­ment for the vo­cif­er­ous, par­ti­san crowd and qual­i­fy­ing for our first CON­CA­CAF Fut­sal Cham­pi­onship. That night I would have bet any­thing that fut­sal had ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Post-tour­na­ment, Clay­ton Mor­ris be­came Vice Chair­man of new­born FATT. Trinidad and To­ba­go suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed its CFU ti­tle in 2008 un­der his ex­cel­lent lead­er­ship, de­feat­ing Haiti 6:3 in the fi­nal at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, where FI­FA built two top qual­i­ty fut­sal courts with as­so­ci­at­ed in­fra­struc­ture in 2005. How­ev­er, events in the years fol­low­ing our ini­tial suc­cess would prove my 2004 op­ti­mism mis­placed. TTFF/TTFA failed to seize the ini­tia­tive and build on the suc­cess­es of 2004 and 2008. Lo­cal com­pe­ti­tions were nev­er mean­ing­ful­ly es­tab­lished at any lev­el, our “small goal” cul­ture was nev­er har­nessed in­to the ser­vice of fut­sal, we dis­ap­peared from the CON­CA­CAF stage and the fledg­ling game fad­ed from pub­lic con­scious­ness in­to years of po­lit­i­cal anonymi­ty and com­pe­ti­tion drought. In 2015 FATT gained for­mal mem­ber­ship in TTFA af­ter a decade in of­fi­cial lim­bo.

(Fut­sal 868>

I re­mem­ber well the ar­gu­ment re­gard­ing mem­ber­ship and democ­ra­cy in Fut­sal868 from my time in TTFA pol­i­tics and as a mem­ber of its Board of Di­rec­tors un­der David John-Williams. Sim­ply put, the cen­tral is­sue was the le­git­i­ma­cy of FATT’s lead­er­ship if the as­so­ci­a­tion had no reg­is­tered mem­bers and no elec­tions. While doubt con­cern­ing its le­git­i­ma­cy ap­par­ent­ly lingers among foot­ball fol­low­ers, Fut­sal868 has gained cred­i­bil­i­ty at the lev­el of civ­il so­ci­ety and gov­ern­ment. In 2022 the as­so­ci­a­tion won the Youth Proiect Im­pact award of the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice. More­over, in the af­ter­math of COVID it has con­duct­ed a low in­ten­si­ty ac­tiv­i­ty pro­gramme guid­ed by two Strate­gic Plans (2018-2023 and 2024-2029), for which the as­so­ci­a­tion must be laud­ed, the cen­tral plank be­ing a grass­roots pro­gramme for com­mu­ni­ties, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools – its “Let’s Play Fut­sal Car­a­van”. With­in this it has made coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion avail­able to school teach­ers and oth­er in­ter­est­ed per­sons via a FI­FA por­tal. This ini­tia­tive is aimed at “mas­si­fi­ca­tion” of the play­er and coach pools and is Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion-ap­proved. The sec­ondary schools In­ter­col (for Form 1 stu­dents) an­nounced last week is an ex­am­ple of strate­gic think­ing to be ad­mired as it is fol­low-up on the work of the Car­a­van and aims to grow schools fut­sal from be­low. The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so launched a cor­po­rate tour­na­ment last year (with twelve par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies), ex­pand­ed to twen­ty-four in 2026. In 2027 it plans to start a fran­chise league of eight teams. The grass­roots/schools pro­gramme and the cor­po­rate tour­na­ment are par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant, not on­ly be­cause these ini­tia­tives spread the game, but al­so due to their po­ten­tial sus­tain­abil­i­ty by schools and busi­ness­es us­ing their own re­sources. This is crit­i­cal be­cause, re­mark­ably, Fut­sal868 re­ceives no sup­port from TTFA, which se­vere­ly lim­its its ca­pac­i­ty for ef­fec­tive fol­low up due to lack of fi­nance and per­son­nel. In­deed, the last fut­sal coach­ing course host­ed by TTFA dates back to 2019 de­spite re­peat­ed re­quests for such sup­port from Fut­sal868, ac­cord­ing to as­so­ci­a­tion of­fi­cials.

In an ear­li­er ar­ti­cle (“Mo’ mon­ey, mo’ prob­lems”) I high­light­ed the fact that fut­sal re­ceived the grand bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of TTD .01 mil­lion (0.5% of to­tal 2026 bud­get) al­though Fut­sal868 has nev­er re­ceived an an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion, ac­cord­ing to its Pres­i­dent, Ge­of­frey Ed­wards. TTFA, in­stead of in­vest­ing in the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the game, con­tin­ues to treat it like an or­phan but will at­tempt, un­doubt­ed­ly with­out suc­cess, to qual­i­fy for the 2028 Fut­sal World Cup.

(In­ter­na­tion­al stage>

Since 2004, Trinidad and To­ba­go has par­tic­i­pat­ed in four CON­CA­CAF Fut­sal Cham­pi­onships – 2004, 2008, 2021 and 2024, win­ning one of eleven match­es (7:4 v Suri­name in 2004). Be­tween World Cups pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the do­mes­tic game has al­ways been gross­ly in­ef­fec­tive. Yet one could rea­son­ably ar­gue that, if we grow the game prop­er­ly, it may be eas­i­er for us to qual­i­fy for the fut­sal World Cup than for the foot­ball ver­sion. Af­ter the 2021 CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­onship, Con­stan­tine Kon­stin, FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF fut­sal in­struc­tor and for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al coach said, “Fut­sal can be a big time fu­ture for the coun­try, for the com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly in the schools, get­ting the kids play­ing fut­sal. It doesn’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to put this on. I high­ly rec­om­mend that TTFA start build­ing fut­sal courts (and) leagues so that, one day, T&T can win a World Cup in fut­sal.” The 2028 Fut­sal World Cup will roll around in Oc­to­ber 2028. Four teams will qual­i­fy and we are al­ready late in prepa­ra­tion, the biggest prob­lem be­ing the lack of a prop­er league. The “week­end war­riors” of Fut­sal868’s cor­po­rate com­pe­ti­tion will not get the job done. Paul De­cle, for­mer na­tion­al coach said af­ter 2024 CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­onship, “The sport of fut­sal suits the type of play­ers we have in TT. We know what it’s like to play small-sided games. Hav­ing a league where the play­ers have to play un­der the rules of fut­sal, things like that will bring us in­to tour­na­ments like this bet­ter pre­pared. All things con­sid­ered, we don’t have fut­sal leagues and ob­vi­ous­ly it’s foot­ballers who are com­ing to play fut­sal.”

Fut­sal868 is a sex­i­er name than Fut­sal As­so­ci­a­tion TT to be sure and, con­ceiv­ably, eas­i­er to sell. The change of name re­veals strate­gic and com­mer­cial vi­sion. But while the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ef­fort to spread the game at grass­roots/schools and com­pe­ti­tion lev­els is in­deed good news, the scale and speed of progress are too lim­it­ed and too slow. Now we must get on with mar­ry­ing the dis­ci­pline of or­ga­nized fut­sal to the spon­tane­ity and in­ven­tive­ness of “small goal” on a mass scale. We al­ready have the mod­el pro­vid­ed by the 2004 team, which com­prised over­whelm­ing­ly “small goal”, not league foot­ball play­ers This re­quires the com­mit­ment of in­creased hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources. Fut­sal868’s cur­rent mod­el of au­ton­o­my un­der TTFA (like SS­FL) will re­main in­ad­e­quate to the task un­less it could se­cure ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing from TTFA, the Min­istry of Sport and the pri­vate sec­tor. Fut­sal868 is the na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion re­spon­si­ble for the sport, not a pri­vate event man­age­ment com­pa­ny stag­ing an an­nu­al tour­na­ment. While it is on the right track, if fut­sal is to have a mean­ing­ful fu­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go its lead­er­ship must hit warp speed and tran­scend its cur­rent self-im­posed parochial lim­its. If it can­not do this the sport will re­main a niche ac­tiv­i­ty and the World Cup will re­main a dis­tant pipe dream.

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.