It's taken us four years to get back to square one...again.
There is no doubt that popular sentiment is on his side, given the country's affection for the diminutive playmaker who has been wearing national colours at different levels for 25 years now.
However, in the same way that the very few who have not become disciples of the global personality cult surrounding Barack Obama await the real change promised by the new American President, the aura surrounding the "Little Magician" could vanish into thin air should he and assistant Zoran Vranes fail to resuscitate another faltering World Cup qualifying campaign.
At least they have some time on their hands with eight weeks to go before the next fixture against Costa Rica at the Hasely Crawford Stadium on June 6, and then the trip to the imposing Azteca Stadium to take on Mexico four days later.
Indeed, by the time the final whistle is blown on that game in the Mexican capital, we will probably know definitively if the choice of Latapy to replace Francisco Maturana was either inspired or an instinctive act of desperation that follows the pattern of the last two World Cup journeys.
You know the saying about those who fail to learn the lessons of history being doomed to repeat it? Well, in this case, it seems so obvious that there should be no need to go into the details.
Yet the fact that we are once again replaying the same scene suggests that we don't even realise what we're doing to ourselves.
So, for the record if nothing else, here's why Wednesday's announcement by the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation is further evidence of our failure to make real progress in the beautiful game.
Rewind the tape of our footballing life four years and the situation is almost exactly the same, except that Bertille St Clair was removed as head coach and replaced eventually by Dutchman Leo Beenhakker after Trinidad and Tobago had earned just one point from the first three games of the last leg of the journey to get to Germany 2006.
Now, with two points also from three games on the road to South Africa 2010, the resignation of Maturana and his technical team has been accepted by the TTFF, with administrative supremo Jack Warner insisting that while disagreements over tactics and the way forward for the national side led to the parting of ways, it was all done very amicably.
(By the way, I can't just let it pass that on the website of the sport's world governing body, FIFA, St Clair's nationality is defined as "Unknown" in the official match reports of the qualifying games in which he was in charge.
Unless "(UNK)" is now the accepted abbreviation for citizens of Trinidad and Tobago who were born in the sister isle, this is really a slight that should be corrected immediately.)
Okay, so let's press the rewind button again and head back to 2001, when Scotsman Ian Porterfield was the coaching casualty and Brazilian Rene Simoes, the man who took Jamaica to the 1998 World Cup finals in France, brought in to try and work a miracle.
Back then, the situation was much worse than the one Beenhakker faced when he took over in 2005, for not only were Trinidad and Tobago languishing at the bottom of the six-team standings with just one point from five games, but there was also turmoil off the field with the senior pair of Latapy and Dwight Yorke (another citizen of "UNK" by the way) being first dropped by Simoes for missing practice and then reprieved, and then announcing their retirements from national duty in acrimonious circumstances, with Warner describing the Tobagonian as a "cancer" to the game.
Of course, the fundamental difference between those two experiences is that while the religious Brazilian could do nothing to resuscitate the bid to get to Japan/Korea 2002, the pragmatic Dutchman, who was appointed after a number of senior players rejected former Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson on the grounds of his public racist utterings, was able to get the effort back on track just in time and led Trinidad and Tobago to the promised land.
With that more recent experience in mind, and given the growing consternation at the inconsistencies in selection and tactics during Maturana's 15 months at the helm, the latest development may yet prove to be a timely intervention, especially as the journey is far from over, even with the indifferent beginning and especially that terrible showing in the United States nine days ago.
If nothing else, it would be extremely difficult for a team under Latapy's stewardship to play any worse than that game in Nashville, even if they were to lose by wider margins than 3-0 when those critical fixtures against the Costa Ricans and Mexicans come around in two months' time.
Still, you can't get away from the fact that all of this is nothing more than a repetition of history.
Only the dates and a few names have changed, and while the perpetually optimistic will maintain that we should be looking forward hopefully and confidently instead of harping on the past, it is precisely the failure to learn from those not-so-distant experiences that have contributed to the situation we are in right now.
Like the boom and bust cycle, it may be depressing, but at least it's predictable.