How much do you value the possibility of emotional satisfaction?
I ask this question in the context of the financing of sport in this country, with the sun about to rise on another campaign to reach the FIFA World Cup Finals even as dark clouds of economic stringency get ominously lower.
There was nothing new in yesterday's lament of Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) president Ollie Camps over the woeful financial situation of the organisation, resulting in the cancellation of next week's proposed friendly international in Haiti. What caught the eye though was this comment in relation to funding the effort to get to Brazil 2014:
"We remain hopeful that the Ministry (of Sport) can assist, but this remains another one of our hurdles. But I want to ensure the followers of our national team that the Federation will do what it can to ensure that we find the funding. One of our next steps will be the implementation of a proper marketing strategy to have corporate bodies on board to assist us in our quest to qualify for the next World Cup finals and to assist in our overall development programme."
Aside from the inference that the TTFF only embarks on a "proper marketing strategy" that is also supposed to benefit "our overall development programme" on the eve of another World Cup effort, a more pertinent issue is whether or not public funds should be poured into an entity that has repeatedly failed to hold itself accountable to the very people from whom they are expecting yet another bailout.
We should not need to be reminded of the comments by Justice Devindra Rampersad, presiding in the suit filed by 13 members of the 2006 World Cup squad for what they claimed to be promised bonus payments from the TTFF, who stated in March of this year that he "took great issue with the accounts filed" by the Federation in relation to revenue from the World Cup campaign, adding that "it is totally unaccountable...I cannot understand why it is not accounted for."
So the TTFF has a well-established track record of poor accountability. And now, as Sport Company of Trinidad and Tobago (SPORTT) CEO Errol Ashby confirmed in these pages yesterday, with a 40 percent cut in funding from government due to this protracted guava season, is it acceptable to channel a significant portion of limited financial resources to another World Cup qualifying campaign?
That's really where the question at the top comes in, because many will hold to the view that the feel-good factor, the emotional lift and the national sense of optimism, not to mention an intense patriotism, that is generated by a serious bid to get to Brazil in three years' time will be more than worth the money spent to get the squad there.
To do otherwise, if we stick to this line of thinking, is tantamount to being unpatriotic, to putting dollars and cents ahead of national pride.
Maybe we would all be leaning towards a fund-at-any-cost policy up to five years ago. But now, we can all look back on the road to Germany 2006, the emotional roller-coaster of the qualifying campaign culminating in the dramatic playoff victory in Bahrain, the goalless draw with Sweden on World Cup finals debut followed by a battling performance against England.
Yet after all that, what? Nothing. Nothing, that is, except controversy off the field and regression on it. Never mind the number of players from this country plying their trade in top professional leagues in Europe and elsewhere, where are the results—either in consistent improvement of the senior men's national team or the standard of play in the TT Pro League—to suggest that the investment was worth it, and, very importantly, is deserving of another go?
Look, nobody has to tell me how much it meant to have our national team at the greatest stage in world sport. I nearly butt the TV screen in trying to get Stern John's header into the back of the net before John Terry cleared off the line just before halftime against the English. A severe migraine after the game was made considerably worse by the sight of happy Trinis chipping down the road in St James celebrating a 2-0 defeat.
There are no doubt many, many more thousands with infinitely more passionate memories of that experience in 2006. But how do you feel now? What confidence do you have that this time will be different, that making it to the next World Cup finals will put the game here on a sounder, more prosperous footing for the long term?
Well, apart from the fact that none of the footballing developments so far this year (the hiring of Otto Pfister as head coach notwithstanding) inspires any hope of a meaningful transformation, I am not going to endorse one cent of public money going towards a venture overseen by the TTFF, an organisation with a track record of poor accountability that goes back—at the very least—to a certain event on November 19, 1989.
If the leeches and other assorted parasites who occupy our Parliament want to latch onto the campaign and be seen as the great benefactors and saviours of our boys, that is their self-serving business. This time, accountability should be put first.
Does this make me unpatriotic?
Maybe, but given the direction this country is heading, I prefer to be tarred as a traitor than welcomed as a lemming.