“I nev­er have been in de­spair about the world. I’ve been en­raged by it. You can’t tell the chil­dren there’s no hope.”

—James Bald­win,

African-Amer­i­can au­thor

Race and eth­nic­i­ty are nev­er far from the sur­face of life and sport. In every coun­try. And while most peo­ple ac­cept the dif­fer­ences be­tween us, there are al­ways op­por­tunists ready to tap in­to them for their own neg­a­tive pur­pos­es.

I played in the Col­leges Foot­ball League, now the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), for St Mary’s Col­lege (CIC) dur­ing the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s—a wa­ter­shed pe­ri­od in our na­tion­al his­to­ry, punc­tu­at­ed by the 1970 black pow­er rev­o­lu­tion.

CIC had many white play­ers in that era, one of them, my friend to this day, Frankie Stone. Frankie was a “goal-get­ter”.

I re­mem­ber a match in 1970, when an op­po­nent threat­ened him, “White boy, if you score to­day, I will kill you”.

Frankie came run­ning to me, his cap­tain, to re­port that. My re­sponse was, “Go and score,” which he did. And he lived to score an­oth­er day.

Play­ing for Saints, I was called “white boy” too. Me, the first child of a Chi­nese fa­ther and black moth­er. But I un­der­stood that for what it was—foot­ball ban­ter, yes, but al­so a fun­da­men­tal­ly po­lit­i­cal state­ment in­stinc­tive­ly couched in racial—not racist—terms. Af­ter all, I was rep­re­sent­ing an in­sti­tu­tion that be­longed to the Ro­man Catholic es­tab­lish­ment, which was seen from the black pow­er per­spec­tive as a bul­wark of the white-dom­i­nat­ed pre- and post-colo­nial so­cial or­der.

“I nev­er see a good Chi­nee yet,” was an­oth­er barb thrown my way in those days. I would laugh that off. I was on my way to cap­tain­ing the na­tion­al Un­der-19 team and earn­ing a schol­ar­ship to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, where I would learn to si­lence peo­ple who called me “n****r”, win the 1974 NCAA Di­vi­sion I ti­tle and ac­quire two de­grees. In 1990, as coach of Mal­ick Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, I dis­cov­ered a prodi­gious tal­ent named Arnold Dwari­ka in the se­clud­ed vil­lage of Sosconosco, San­ta Cruz. I un­veiled him that SS­FL sea­son and for the first two or three match­es he strug­gled. I re­mem­ber the pierc­ing shout from the side­line dur­ing a home match on CIC ground, “Look Loy, wey yuh get this c****e from?” My re­sponse - to Arnold - was “Just play, Arnold!” By the end of the sea­son, he was the toast of the league. He would be­come one of our coun­try’s all-time great­est play­ers.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, sport is a racial democ­ra­cy. We sup­port ath­letes of all races and none. But stereo­types linger about In­di­ans (and Chi­nese) as “book beat­ers” who pri­ori­tise aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers (med­i­cine, busi­ness, law) over sport. His­tor­i­cal­ly, they were cast as weak­er, lead­ing to a fal­la­cy shared by many that ge­net­ics lim­it their in­ter­est and ceil­ing in con­tact sports, so they play crick­et, oth­er non-con­tact sports or none at all.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, where the for­mer are con­cerned, that has trans­lat­ed as “In­di­an cyah play foot­ball” - nev­er mind that we have seen qual­i­ty In­di­an play­ers in our foot­ball over the decades and, in­deed, those old enough may re­call the vis­it to T&T by In­do-Suri­namese club Jai Hind (mean­ing “Long live In­dia”) in the late 1960s.

Foot­ball has moved on

Pri­or to the re­cent FI­FA U-15 World Cup, I wrote (in “No tea leaves need­ed”), “in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, the low­er down the age group food chain one de­scends, the greater the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­pet­i­tive par­i­ty be­tween op­po­nents. Why? Be­cause tal­ent, which all coun­tries pos­sess, has not been af­fect­ed by qual­i­ty coach­ing and oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal in­puts at the low­er lev­el as much as it po­ten­tial­ly will have been at high­er lev­els.” The U-15 tour­na­ment gen­er­al­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed this state­ment. Our boys met In­dia in the sev­enth of their ten match­es, pri­or to which I cau­tioned (on TTFA so­cial me­dia) that we should not “sleep on In­dia”. So said, so done. The re­sult was a 3-2 win for In­dia af­ter they went be­hind 2-0.

Some sup­port­ers ac­cept­ed the loss grace­ful­ly but the stereo­typed idea of In­di­ans and foot­ball over­whelmed TTFA’s Face­book page. Here are some sam­ple com­ments: “Imag­ine In­dia have no foot­ball team an yet still Trinidad get lixs”. “In­dia prob­a­bly played bare­foot and still win”. “How boi how, howwwww? Prakash and Padarath could on­ly play crick­et boi. Nah man”. “We play against a bun­cha bats­men and leg spin­ners and STILL loss? No way. Bess we hang up we tugs yes”. And, “I didn’t even know In­dia had a foot­ball team. Re­al­ly fel­las, RE­AL­LY?” Re­mark­ably, such com­ments in­clud­ed posts from per­sons with Hin­du or Mus­lim sur­names.

You would think foot­ball sup­port­ers have learned by now that foot­ball moves on and we have failed to keep up even with coun­tries where foot­ball is the sec­ond, third, even fourth sport - Cana­da, Pana­ma, USA. Even Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has now sur­passed us. Take no coun­try for grant­ed to­day, but In­dia’s U-15s are not their first na­tion­al team to de­feat T&T. Match­es be­tween the coun­tries are few and far be­tween, but in June 1984 In­dia vis­it­ed to play three match­es, win­ning the first 3-1 but los­ing two by the same 3-0 score. In Au­gust 2011, they again lost 3-0 to the So­ca War­riors in Port-of-Spain. And of course, Tri­nis have played in In­di­an club foot­ball, in­clud­ing Mar­cus Joseph, Ju­dah Gar­cia, Den­zil Theobald and Cor­nell Glen.

The In­di­an lessons

In­di­an foot­ball is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial col­lapse un­der the All In­dia Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (AIFF), high­light­ed by un­sta­ble top-tier leagues, ma­jor cor­po­rate with­drawals, and plum­met­ing gov­ern­ment fund­ing. On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, the AIFF has churned through 25 dif­fer­ent coach­es across var­i­ous age groups and se­nior na­tion­al teams since late 2024. Last year, the men’s na­tion­al team suf­fered an his­toric loss to Bangladesh (their first in 22 years) and failed to qual­i­fy for the 2027 Asian Cup.

Mean­time, le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­stric­tions from courts have left the fed­er­a­tion un­der threat of a po­ten­tial FI­FA ban. Cor­po­rate own­ers have called for a piv­ot to­ward grass­roots de­vel­op­ment away from un­vi­able mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar fran­chise mod­els, and ma­jor foot­ball fig­ures and re­gion­al law­mak­ers have open­ly con­demned the Fed­er­a­tion’s sys­temic paral­y­sis and called on the Min­istry of Youth Af­fairs and Sports to force ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the AIFF. Does all of this sound fa­mil­iar?

Nonethe­less, In­dia’s U-15 cam­paign prepa­ra­tion was ad­mirable, based on the Fed­er­a­tion’s struc­tured and da­ta-dri­ven tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme, which places se­lect­ed play­ers in­to spe­cialised AIFF acad­e­mies fund­ed and sup­port­ed by the FI­FA Tal­ent De­vel­op­ment Scheme to cre­ate a struc­tured path to­ward the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el. Twelve thou­sand play­ers in the 2011 and 2012 age co­hort were eval­u­at­ed across the coun­try. This is the po­lar op­po­site of how our team was se­cret­ly se­lect­ed. In­dia fin­ished 87th out of 189 par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries (ahead of T&T’s 94th and a rank­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than their men’s 138), with five wins, one draw, and four de­feats in 10 match­es.

This was a very use­ful tour­na­ment. It pro­vid­ed ex­cel­lent in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence for our young play­ers and it con­firms where we are in glob­al foot­ball - the mid­dling tier (like our men who are ranked 105th), with a record of four wins and six loss­es, beat­ing two Caribbean teams (Cay­man Is­lands and St Kitts), one Asian (Macau) and one African (Liberia), but los­ing to two African teams (Egypt and Namib­ia), two Eu­ro­pean (France and Gibral­tar), and two Asian (In­dia and Iraq). Crit­i­cal­ly, in the sec­ond phase, we lost four of the five match­es we played. The 94th rank­ing placed us fourth in the Caribbean be­hind Haiti (61st), Ja­maica (63rd) and Cu­ba (88th). Oh, and Chi­na fin­ished 50th.

There are morals to this sto­ry. In­dia, with no mean­ing­ful in­ter­na­tion­al pedi­gree, its league foot­ball in cri­sis and a raft of ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial prob­lems, made the strate­gic de­ci­sion to swiv­el to youth de­vel­op­ment and fin­ished ahead of all but two Caribbean coun­tries. So, to para­phrase the folk say­ing, “If In­dia could play, who is we?” And then there is this: racial big­otry is the pre­serve of the ig­no­rant.

To­day, giv­en the ris­ing tide of in­vec­tive from the awak­ened racists among us, we must pro­tect sport from the poi­son of racial prej­u­dice and its un­holy spawn - racial di­vi­sion. In that re­gard, I am a firm be­liev­er in “all ah we is one”.

The best day in the his­to­ry of race re­la­tions in our coun­try was the day we qual­i­fied for World Cup Ger­many 2006. We saw an out­pour­ing of uni­ty in the streets - nev­er be­fore or since. Race and colour were tem­porar­i­ly made ir­rel­e­vant. I pray to the gods of foot­ball and pol­i­tics for more such days. But ul­ti­mate­ly, it is we, the peo­ple, who must save our­selves.