Top security for WarriorsMonday, August 11 2008
TRINIDAD and Tobago’s national football team arrived in Port-Au-Prince at about 5 pm on Friday in the presence of heavy UN Police personnel ahead of yesterday’s friendly international against Haiti at the National Stadium.
The TT team, after a two-hour stopover in Miami, was greeted by Haitian Football Federation officials and a Digicel Welcome Band.
There was a large gathering outside at the Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport but more noticeable was the dozen or so armed officers on UN jeeps which kept close watch on the TT contingent.
The footballers were made to wait in their team bus for about thirty minutes for the luggage to arrive. Team coach Francisco Maturana looked on from the bus doorway as several persons walked past staring, some suggesting a beating for the visitors yesterday.
What followed during the drive through part of the city and to the Karibe Hotel was beyond any of the players’ wildest imagination. “What we have in Trinidad is like heaven to here,” Cornell Glen told his team-mates as the bus made its way past an area of four dirt-filled playing fields occupied by dozens of youngsters in rags running down footballs.
A couple fields seemed to have more organised activities than others, some attracting more crowds but with the majority of groups made up purely of football crazy kids.
The children here live every day with the odds stacked against them but football is a way of hope for them and parents sign contracts with the Football Federation to allow their kids to enter the Goal Project Centre.
But only 200 or so kids can be involved and the rest have to keep on kicking in mud in hope of better days.
“Imagine all you seeing is youngsters and poor people walking the road or playing football. Some selling almost anything to make a living in all that dust,” Densill Theobald said.
“Things might be hard at times back in ‘Trini’ but we really have to say that we have things nice as well oui.”
The TT team liaison officer predicted close to 15,000 at the National Stadium for yesterday’s game.
“Dwight Yorke still has a lot, a lot of fans in Haiti. I think they read somewhere that he will be playing for Trinidad again so some of them have been asking us if he was coming to Haiti,” he added.
Yorke broke the offside trap to score for TT in a 1-1 draw in a World Cup qualifier in May 2000. This time the Haitians are hoping to meet TT in the final round, feeling it’s their best chance to progress out of a semi-final grouping with Suriname, Costa Rica and El Salvador.
