Cometh the women’s hour – Trinidad Guardian

I quote my­self from a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle (“The em­per­or has no clothes”), “The As­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly bet all its mar­bles on an in­ter­na­tion­al break­through to daz­zle the pub­lic and mask the mul­ti­tude of sins of com­mis­sion and omis­sion on the do­mes­tic front.” I re­fer to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, of course, and de­spite its chron­ic fail­ure it has one last mar­ble to bet on 17 April when our se­nior women face El Sal­vador at home in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing. A place in the 2026 CON­CA­CAF W Cham­pi­onship, the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment for the 2027 FI­FA Women’s World Cup, will be on the line. The equa­tion be­fore us is sim­ple. We must win; for El Sal­vador a draw will suf­fice. There could be no more dra­mat­ic script. The Cen­tral Amer­i­cans have demon­strat­ed clear su­pe­ri­or­i­ty against our women in re­cent years, win­ning four of the last five en­coun­ters. So, a lot is at stake po­lit­i­cal­ly for TTFA, ca­reer-wise for the play­ers and staff, and emo­tion­al­ly for the coun­try, which no longer ex­pects vic­to­ries but which al­ways hopes for pos­i­tive re­sults.

Trinidad and To­ba­go women’s coach Dami­an Brig­gs sound­ed a sober note last week say­ing “What I try to do is to keep the big noise away from the play­ers and the staff so that we just con­tin­ue work­ing the way we’ve worked for the last two games and just try to make the im­prove­ments as we go along.” Brig­gs brings a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence with Nor­wich City FC and Charl­ton Ath­let­ic FC acad­e­mies to the job, and his lev­el head­ed words are pleas­ant­ly atyp­i­cal of TTFA coach­es who gen­er­al­ly pre­fer to make swag­ger­ing state­ments. Every coach lives or dies by his se­lec­tions and Brig­gs wise­ly cir­cum­vent­ed dis­tract­ing con­tro­ver­sy when ques­tioned about the com­po­si­tion of his squad, say­ing “Cer­tain play­ers, I’m not go­ing to com­ment on. But we just want to work with the play­ers avail­able, the best play­ers that are there, and try to put to­geth­er the best team pos­si­ble to go in­to the game against El Sal­vador.” He ev­i­dent­ly un­der­stands that less is of­ten more, at least in in­ter­views.

Demon­strat­ing steadi­ly im­prov­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pedi­gree, El Sal­vador beat Ecuador 3:2 in a Feb­ru­ary friend­ly in Quito. La Se­lec­ta (as the Sal­vado­ran team is known) has not idled since the March round of qual­i­fy­ing match­es. Af­ter dis­man­tling Bar­ba­dos 13:0 they trav­eled to Pe­ru to play a brace of friend­lies against their South Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts win­ning 4:0 and 1:0. These are no­table re­sults. Speak­ing to his na­tion­al me­dia mere days ago, El Sal­vador coach Er­ic Acuña com­ment­ed, “Mod­ern foot­ball en­cour­ages a more di­rect style of play. It’s not about pass­ing the ball around for the sake of pass­ing, but about pass­ing with pur­pose. We want to learn by at­tack­ing, not de­fend­ing, be­cause that’s the on­ly way to score goals.” Di­rect play and use of space be­hind the op­pos­ing de­fence are cen­tral to his game phi­los­o­phy. He sees this ap­proach as es­sen­tial to his team’s abil­i­ty to com­pete against more de­vel­oped CON­CA­CAF ri­vals. In this he is cor­rect but Acuña clear­ly does not un­der­stand less is more. His words let slip his tac­ti­cal hand. Our lo­cal tech­ni­cians are du­ly fore­warned and fore­armed. The women are our last hope in the cur­rent World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cy­cle. Our teams of both gen­ders and all age groups have been elim­i­nat­ed. I will para­phrase an old adage – “Cometh the hour, cometh the women”. On 17 April we will re­ly on them. And please TTFA, let the women wear tra­di­tion­al red.

The FI­FA Coun­cil re­cent­ly di­rect­ed, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, that teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in FI­FA’s women’s com­pe­ti­tions must en­sure that their head coach and/or at least one of the as­sis­tant coach­es, at least one of the med­ical staff, and at least two of­fi­cials seat­ed on the team bench must be fe­male. This is an ex­tra­or­di­nary di­rec­tive. One that cod­i­fies dis­crim­i­na­tion against men in the name of pro­mot­ing the de­vel­op­ment of women. On a prac­ti­cal lev­el, not every coun­try or every foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion is ready for this. Jill El­lis, FI­FA’s Chief Foot­ball Of­fi­cer says, “There are sim­ply not enough women in coach­ing to­day. We must do more to ac­cel­er­ate change by cre­at­ing clear­er path­ways, ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, and in­creas­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty for women on our side­lines”. FI­FA’s di­rec­tive ev­i­dent­ly re­sponds as much to cos­met­ics as to pro­fes­sion­al con­sid­er­a­tions. It is a typ­i­cal­ly “Amer­i­can” so­lu­tion to a prob­lem of mi­nor­i­ty un­der-rep­re­sen­ta­tion – throw a quo­ta at it. Quo­tas are the en­e­my of mer­i­toc­ra­cy and qual­i­ty con­trol. Their ex­is­tence is used by some to min­i­mize the val­ue of mi­nor­i­ty achieve­ment. And when gen­der be­comes the main cri­te­ri­on for se­lec­tion rather than the train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence and record of a can­di­date, this fa­cil­i­tates a place in the sun for per­sons who may not be suit­ably qual­i­fied.

Few coun­tries, all West­ern Eu­ro­pean, ap­ply manda­to­ry gen­der quo­tas in hir­ing and these are re­strict­ed to Board lev­el ap­point­ments. In the Unit­ed States, laws pro­hib­it manda­to­ry hir­ing quo­tas based on gen­der or oth­er pro­tect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics. In­deed, re­cent Supreme Court rul­ings have com­pli­cat­ed the le­gal land­scape for busi­ness di­ver­si­ty quo­tas. There, de­spite decades old di­ver­si­ty pro­grammes in­tend­ed to rec­ti­fy his­tor­i­cal in­equities, the Court now re­quires that they do so with­out en­gag­ing in re­verse dis­crim­i­na­tion, i.e. un­fair treat­ment, based on race or gen­der, of mem­bers of a ma­jor­i­ty or dom­i­nant group in fa­vor of mi­nor­i­ty or his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties.

FI­FA has ob­served an “all-fe­male” rule for Women’s World Cups since 1995, as one part of its strate­gic ap­proach to the in­clu­sion of women in all ar­eas of the game. On­ly fe­male ref­er­ees are used in women’s com­pe­ti­tions even though women of­fi­ci­ate in the “men’s” tour­na­ments. No one has chal­lenged this pol­i­cy. At a min­i­mum one would prob­a­bly be la­beled “misog­y­nist” for do­ing so. More im­por­tant­ly, a chal­lenge could lead to a FI­FA ban. But would FI­FA dare to im­pose a sim­i­lar man­date for eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty coach­es, staff or ref­er­ees? Would that go un­op­posed?

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act 2000 pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion in em­ploy­ment based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der and oth­er pro­tect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics. FI­FA’s new man­date is patent­ly il­le­gal un­der its pro­vi­sions. No lo­cal eco­nom­ic sec­tor or so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion would at­tempt to in­tro­duce a sim­i­lar di­rec­tive. Were our women to qual­i­fy for the 2027 World Cup, would TTFA ig­nore na­tion­al law by re­serv­ing a coach­ing po­si­tion for a fe­male coach to the ex­clu­sion of male can­di­dates? On a prac­ti­cal lev­el many na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions, con­front­ed by un­der­de­vel­op­ment of their do­mes­tic women’s game, lack suit­ably qual­i­fied fe­male per­son­nel. Such as­so­ci­a­tions, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, will now have to ap­point un­qual­i­fied lo­cal fe­male coach­es or re­cruit qual­i­fied for­eign­ers at greater ex­pense. We need more fe­male coach­es and oth­er per­son­nel, but the method­ol­o­gy of pur­su­ing that ob­jec­tive mat­ters and na­tion­al law can­not be ig­nored even if FI­FA be­lieves it­self above such leg­is­la­tion. The ex­pan­sion and de­vel­op­ment of the women’s game should pro­ceed ra­tio­nal­ly, guid­ed by the con­crete re­al­i­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties with­in each na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion and each coun­try’s le­gal frame­work and po­lit­i­cal cul­ture.

In an­oth­er re­cent ar­ti­cle (“Last train to a World Cup) I called for greater TTFA in­vest­ment in the lo­cal women’s game, by which I mean not on­ly na­tion­al se­lec­tions, but even more so, grass­roots and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for girls.The truth is that TTFA has long been ahead of FI­FA’s di­rec­tive. We have ap­point­ed fe­male coach­es at all lev­els since the 2016 ap­point­ment of Ital­ian Car­oli­na Morace – the on­ly woman to be ap­point­ed to the job since 1991 when the se­nior women’s team was formed. Our fe­male coach­es are few. And they have been un­suc­cess­ful in their na­tion­al age group ap­point­ments. Mean­time, in our do­mes­tic women’s league (WOLF) on­ly two of the sev­en clubs have a fe­male coach, while the coach­es in SS­FL’s girls’ com­pe­ti­tion are over­whelm­ing­ly male. The prob­lem is trans­par­ent. But the ex­ter­nal im­po­si­tion of a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry reg­u­la­tion aimed at our na­tion­al teams does noth­ing to re­solve our do­mes­tic, sub­or­di­nate lev­el is­sues. The so­lu­tion re­quires what I call “mas­si­fi­ca­tion” – ex­pan­sion of the num­ber of fe­male coach­es, which broad­ens the cadre of elite coach­es for na­tion­al ap­point­ments. Ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­cruit­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, aimed at for­mer fe­male play­ers in par­tic­u­lar, would be much more ef­fec­tive in the long term. The groom­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion of lo­cal fe­male coach­es is es­sen­tial, with em­pha­sis on train­ing and plac­ing them at the grass­roots, age group, schools and league lev­els. This would be or­gan­ic growth from be­low, not ar­ti­fi­cial “growth” im­posed from above. FI­FA’s vi­sion is laud­able, but one size does not fit all. All coun­tries do not have de­vel­oped foot­ball in­fra­struc­ture. The pro­mo­tion of women and the el­e­va­tion of their sta­tus with­in each coun­try’s foot­ball ecosys­tem re­quire in­di­vid­u­al­ly tai­lored mea­sures, not an ill-con­ceived glob­al dik­tat.

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.