Stakeholders forum— a gathering of people who care

Last week at the TTFA Tech­ni­cal Cen­tre, we host­ed a FI­FA Am­a­teur Foot­ball Stake­hold­ers Fo­rum. It was one of those rooms where you could feel some­thing try­ing to move: coach­es, ad­min­is­tra­tors, and peo­ple who care about the game, all in one space, lis­ten­ing, shar­ing, and ques­tion­ing.

But when the room emp­ties and the chairs go back in place with on­ly his­toric wall pho­tos left in place, the re­al ques­tion is sim­ple. What do we ac­tu­al­ly do with it?

Be­cause fo­rums and work­shops are not new to us. We’ve had them be­fore. Good pre­sen­ta­tions, strong dis­cus­sions, a few nods of agree­ment… and then, some­times, life goes on as nor­mal. That’s the part we have to con­front hon­est­ly if we want foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go to tru­ly move for­ward.

What stood out this time, though, was the de­liv­ery

FI­FA’s re­gion­al tech­ni­cal con­sul­tants, David Ab­dul and Ian Green­wood, didn’t come here to im­press any­one with big words or the­o­ry. They were di­rect. Clear. At times, un­com­fort­able. And that’s ex­act­ly why it worked.

Green­wood, with his ex­pe­ri­ence com­ing out of Eng­land and Guyana, has seen struc­tured sys­tems up close. There was a calm au­thor­i­ty in how he spoke, no fluff, just clar­i­ty on what works and what doesn’t.

Ab­dul, a for­mer Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of Aru­ba and a play­er who came through the sys­tem at Spar­ta Rot­ter­dam in the Nether­lands, brought a dif­fer­ent en­er­gy. Straight­for­ward. En­gag­ing. He chal­lenged peo­ple in the room to think, not just lis­ten. He wasn’t afraid to say the hard things, but he did it in a way that made you want to re­spond, not re­treat.

Both men al­so made it clear that the fo­rum was not go­ing to be fo­cused on the elite lev­els such as Na­tion­al Se­nior teams and the Pro League. But it was not­ed that strong his­to­ry in these ar­eas can play a big part.

And one of the hard truths that came through, whether said di­rect­ly or felt be­tween the lines, is some­thing we as a foot­ball na­tion have to ac­cept.

The idea that “we have tal­ent” is no longer enough. That line has been used for years in Trinidad and To­ba­go. But the re­al­i­ty now is that al­most every coun­try has tal­ent­ed play­ers. Some may have more, some less, but tal­ent is no longer the sep­a­ra­tor.

What mat­ters is what you do with that tal­ent. Struc­ture. Coach­ing. En­vi­ron­ment. Op­por­tu­ni­ty. Con­sis­ten­cy.

Those are the re­al dif­fer­en­tia­tors now

Be­cause here’s an­oth­er re­al­i­ty we don’t al­ways say out loud. Less than one per cent of play­ers glob­al­ly will ever play pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball.

Let that sit for a mo­ment.

All the train­ing ses­sions, the sac­ri­fices, the dreams… and sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, al­most all of them won’t reach that lev­el. So what are we build­ing for the oth­er 99 per cent?

That’s where am­a­teur foot­ball stops be­ing “sec­ondary” and starts be­com­ing cen­tral.

It’s not just about com­pe­ti­tion. It’s about struc­ture. It’s about op­por­tu­ni­ty. It’s about cre­at­ing en­vi­ron­ments where young play­ers can grow not just as foot­ballers but as peo­ple who can car­ry dis­ci­pline, team­work, and re­silience in­to what­ev­er path they take.

That mes­sage came through clear­ly dur­ing the fo­rum. We can­not con­tin­ue to treat am­a­teur foot­ball as an af­ter­thought.

It is the foun­da­tion. If that foun­da­tion is weak, every­thing above it will even­tu­al­ly feel it: na­tion­al teams, leagues, even ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But again, aware­ness is not the is­sue.

We know this. The re­al is­sue is ex­e­cu­tion.

How many times have we sat in a room, heard good ideas, and then al­lowed them to fade be­cause there was no fol­low-through? No own­er­ship. No time­line. No ac­count­abil­i­ty.

That is where we

have to be bet­ter

Be­cause the truth is, op­por­tu­ni­ties like this don’t come every day. When FI­FA sends ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple in­to your en­vi­ron­ment, not just to talk but to en­gage, chal­lenge, and guide, that’s not some­thing to take light­ly.

We have to squeeze val­ue out of it.

That means go­ing be­yond the fo­rum it­self

It means ask­ing, “What are we im­ple­ment­ing this week?” What changes are we mak­ing at club lev­el? How are we im­prov­ing play­er path­ways? Who is re­spon­si­ble for dri­ving it?

Those are not big, glam­orous ques­tions. But they are the ones that mat­ter.

If we are se­ri­ous about de­vel­op­ment, then the work has to con­tin­ue long af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tions end.

One thing that al­so stood out was the lev­el of en­gage­ment in the room. Peo­ple weren’t there be­cause they had to be. They were there be­cause they want­ed to be. And that’s im­por­tant.

Be­cause re­al change doesn’t come from oblig­a­tion. It comes from be­lief.

When peo­ple start to feel that what they are do­ing mat­ters, that it can ac­tu­al­ly im­pact lives, com­mu­ni­ties, and the fu­ture of the game then the en­er­gy shifts. Con­ver­sa­tions be­come ac­tions. And that’s what we need now. We need move­ment.

The kind where, months from now, we can look back and say that fo­rum wasn’t just a day on the cal­en­dar, it was a turn­ing point in how we ap­proach am­a­teur foot­ball in this coun­try. Be­cause if we get this part right, every­thing else has a chance.