"We doh want no sour­ness in de band, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans is hap­py peo­ple, we doh study peo­ple, we does drink we rum, we doh take on peo­ple." (De­stra Gar­cia, 2026)

Na­tion­al iden­ti­ty is a re­al thing. That sense of be­long­ing to a par­tic­u­lar na­tion that peo­ple share with each oth­er - a peo­ple's self-con­cept. And it in­flu­ences how the world sees them and who they be­lieve them to be as a peo­ple. In­ter­nal pres­sures and ex­ter­nal forces like the in­ter­na­tion­al geopol­i­tics which now ex­er­cise us, can shape and re­shape na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

With all that is hap­pen­ing at the lev­el of gov­ern­ment, pol­i­tics and cul­ture in our coun­try to­day, with a rolling State of Emer­gency that sus­pends fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al and civ­il rights, and arms the gov­ern­ment and po­lice with fright­en­ing pow­ers, ques­tions arise. Who are we? What val­ues do we up­hold? How do oth­er peo­ple see us? These ques­tions are as per­ti­nent in the area of gov­ern­ment for­eign pol­i­cy as in do­mes­tic.

For decades, we be­longed to es­tab­lished mul­ti­lat­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions - CARI­COM, OAS, Unit­ed Na­tions. To­day, gov­ern­ment has min­imised these tra­di­tion­al ties and now pri­ori­tis­es bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ships with Mid­dle East­ern fam­i­ly fief­doms and the gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton, DC. It side­lines CARI­COM, meets US of­fi­cials and joins ad hoc al­liances, such as the Shield of Amer­i­c­as, which is os­ten­si­bly ded­i­cat­ed to "re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty".

To­day, in­stead of our tra­di­tion­al ad­her­ence to the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter, re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law and de­fence of na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty - which are the on­ly bul­wark against de­scent in­to a Dar­win­ian strug­gle among na­tions for sur­vival of the fittest - we now see our gov­ern­ment in full-blood­ed em­brace of the il­le­gal and un­pro­voked use of vi­o­lence in in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs. The change from a law-based, non-aligned and civilised for­eign pol­i­cy to un­qual­i­fied al­le­giance to the US State De­part­ment has caused peo­ple with­in CARI­COM and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to ques­tion their per­cep­tion of T&T. Maybe they should mind their own busi­ness but they now ask, "What is go­ing on with Trinidad?" In the par­al­lel uni­verse of in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, peo­ple are al­so ask­ing the same ques­tion for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

We not red

If a team takes the field in yel­low in CON­CA­CAF, it is Bar­ba­dos, Guyana or Ja­maica. The teams rep­re­sent­ing these coun­tries are iden­ti­fi­able by the colour of their shirt. Brazil, Colom­bia and Ecuador wear yel­low. Ar­genti­na is iden­ti­fied by its blue and white stripes. White is Eng­land or Ger­many. Japan is blue, South Ko­rea and Mo­roc­co are red, and so too, un­til re­cent­ly, was T&T. Our na­tion­al teams in all oth­er sports - net­ball, cy­cling, hock­ey, bas­ket­ball - all wear red. Yet, it ap­pears TTFA na­tion­al teams, those who car­ry our flag and de­fend our iden­ti­ty, have aban­doned our tra­di­tion­al red.

A Cos­ta Ri­can friend and foot­ball col­league called me af­ter our re­cent CON­CA­CAF Un­der-20 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match against Bermu­da to ask if T&T no longer wears red. My re­sponse was, "Ap­par­ent­ly not". In re­cent match­es, our women and our U-17s of both gen­ders have scorned our time-ho­n­oured red shirt for black or white. T&T first proud­ly wore red in the 1930s and since our 1965 World Cup de­but as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion (a 4:1 win against Suri­name), our first colour has al­ways been red. The on­ly Caribbean team that has tra­di­tion­al­ly worn red is now un­recog­nis­able on the field of play.

Nor are we ready

TTFA was found­ed in 1908. But we played our first in­ter­na­tion­al match in 1905 against British Guiana (a 4:0 win). In­dis­putably, the "gold­en age" of our foot­ball were the Jack Warn­er years, be­gin­ning in the late 1980s. Iron­i­cal­ly, this in­cludes ar­guably the worst day in our foot­ball his­to­ry - 19 No­vem­ber 1989 - when we failed to qual­i­fy for the 1990 World Cup in Italy. But the two decades that fol­lowed saw un­prece­dent­ed suc­cess for our foot­ball. Not on­ly did we win nine Caribbean Cup ti­tles, we al­so played in six World Cups - Por­tu­gal 1991 (men's U20), T&T 2001 (men's U17, as host), Ger­many 2006 (men's), South Ko­rea 2007 (men's U-17), Egypt 2009 (men's U20), T&T 2010 (women's U-17, as host) in which we de­feat­ed Chile 1:0).

Think what you may of him, Jack be­strode the foot­ball world like a Colos­sus, we dom­i­nat­ed the Caribbean game, we were re­spect­ed in CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA, our flag flew proud­ly and our red shirt played on pitch­es across the globe. Those who lived through this era had high ex­pec­ta­tions of our foot­ball; our na­tion­al foot­ball iden­ti­ty was strong. And we walked with a swag­ger. Then came the lean years of de­cline, rapid­ly es­ca­lat­ing through the triple dis­as­ter of David John-Williams, COVID and the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, fol­lowed by the cur­rent kak­istoc­ra­cy. To­day, we can­not de­feat any op­po­nent of worth and we have en­tered in­to an iden­ti­ty cri­sis of un­cer­tain­ty, low ex­pec­ta­tion and neg­a­tive self-con­cept. To­day, our young peo­ple know our foot­ball on­ly as medi­oc­rity. And the re­cent aban­don­ment of our tra­di­tion­al red shirt is sym­bol­ic of our loss of iden­ti­ty and pride.

Yet the games con­tin­ue

TTFA pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards said on Jan­u­ary 26, “The TTFA is en­cour­aged by the con­tin­ued progress be­ing demon­strat­ed across our na­tion­al youth pro­grammes...We ex­tend our full sup­port and best wish­es to our Un­der-17 women’s na­tion­al team as they con­tin­ue their Con­ca­caf qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign in Cu­ra­cao." Three weeks lat­er, on 15 Feb­ru­ary, came the an­nounce­ment that, af­ter the twin fail­ures at World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion by our U-17 men and women, he had or­dered the de­vel­op­ment of "pro­grammes to en­sure that the flaws that are ev­i­dent with the coun­try’s youth teams are cor­rect­ed and progress made at in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions". This was such a shab­by turn­around ma­noeu­vre seek­ing to dupe the pub­lic that the As­so­ci­a­tion is on the ball. Since that time, our U-20s al­so failed in qual­i­fy­ing. An­tigua, Haiti and Ja­maica have all ad­vanced.

Then there is the "Granny law". TTFA pushed for its pas­sage and made bo­gus promis­es of a moth­er lode of tal­ent for na­tion­al se­lec­tion. Min­is­ter of Sport Phillip Watts told us, “We be­lieve that by in­tro­duc­ing the grand­par­ent law, we will cre­ate a wider pool of ath­letes to tap in­to." The law was passed in Sep­tem­ber 2025 but not one play­er has been re­cruit­ed to our na­tion­al teams. The sum ef­fect on our na­tion­al teams pro­gramme has been nil. Yet just a few days ago came the news that the Sama­roo fam­i­ly of New York is to be grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship un­der this law, which was first pro­posed for ath­letes.

And there is TTFA's much-tout­ed Na­tion­al Youth League - a good idea and nec­es­sary since Re­pub­lic Bank has sus­pend­ed its Re­pub­lic Cup. “The idea of the Na­tion­al Youth League has been around for six months now. It's one of the rec­om­men­da­tions made by CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA, in terms of our re­struc­tur­ing," pres­i­dent Ed­wards said re­cent­ly. I have news for him - the idea has been around for decades and we have had in­com­plete and short-lived ver­sions of it pre­vi­ous­ly.

His state­ment typ­i­fies the As­so­ci­a­tion's com­plete lack of in­de­pen­dent vi­sion, thought and ini­tia­tive. But good ideas re­quire prop­er im­ple­men­ta­tion to be use­ful and re­ports em­a­nat­ing from the league's open­ing week­end re­veal its un­pro­fes­sion­al arrange­ment - poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion, hap­haz­ard lo­gis­tics, un­cer­tain venues, non-ex­is­tent medics and ab­sent ref­er­ees, not least among them. I kept my own club, FC San­ta Rosa, out of this guar­an­teed dis­or­der. Some play­ers mi­grat­ed to oth­er clubs be­cause they "want to play", which at­tri­tion I ful­ly ac­cept. In this coun­try, the em­pha­sis is on com­pe­ti­tion but prop­er train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, which re­quire pa­tience, are non-pri­or­i­ties. For this rea­son, when we find our­selves in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na, we can­not de­feat any rea­son­ably de­cent op­po­nent, and cer­tain­ly not con­sis­tent­ly. We are no longer re­spect­ed.

So back to na­tion­al iden­ti­ty

Over decades, I have sub­mit­ted many strate­gic and tech­ni­cal pro­pos­als for dis­cus­sion and pos­si­ble ac­tion to var­i­ous it­er­a­tions of TTFA. As re­cent­ly as No­vem­ber of last year, in this Guardian col­umn, I of­fered many yet again ("Obeah doh beat Sci­ence"). I do not on­ly crit­i­cise. We live in a time when, for rea­sons hav­ing to do with foot­ball and oth­er­wise, our coun­try's im­age has been tar­nished re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Un­til and un­less the lead­er­ship and mem­ber­ship of TTFA un­der­stand that they hold a sa­cred trust for our sport, that foot­ball con­tributes a vi­tal strand of our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al im­age, that we feel bet­ter and walk taller when our na­tion­al teams do well, so long will they fail in their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our peo­ple. If they do not un­der­stand my words, they should look to video footage tak­en across the coun­try on the day we qual­i­fied for Ger­many 2006 to re­mind them­selves how –for a mo­ment–we were unit­ed and how much that meant to us. Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are hap­py peo­ple. And we are tired of sour­ness in the band.