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Natasha Wilson’s words came to me while reflecting on my interview with Keith Look Loy. In significant ways, her calypso summed up Keith’s sentiments:
Sweet T&T, is my country/ I want you to know that I love you/ Every creed and race, have an equal place/ So let’s work together to make life sweeter./
I’m a Tringonian, through and through; you know that too/ And I’m proud to say, I love you; you know that I do/ Trinidad is nice, could be a paradise/ Because she was made by the Almighty.
[…] We got to stand up in this world, to make it better/ We got to fight hard to survive/ Survive we must, to stay alive/ Corruption is rife, here in Trinidad/ But we shall overcome it one day…
Look Loy has been in national football since he was 14 years old. That is 60 years at different levels.
“I’ve been a player, I’ve been a coach, I’ve been an administrator; whether it’s a little club, whether it’s a school, whether it’s a regional association, the National Association, and even the international associations—because I’ve worked at the level of Concacaf and Fifa.
“I was captain of St Mary’s [College] and have won titles [as a coach] with Malick Comprehensive, Joe Public FC, and Santa Rosa.
“I was happy living abroad. I returned to Trinidad on 6 June 1980, and it took me 20 years to return to the United States. I gave up my green card and everything.
“Why? Because I knew I was going home to see what I could contribute. That’s a philosophical, spiritual and political commitment. I went to Howard University and got two degrees and one title there.”
But our conversation was not centred on football, but on the role of sports in nation-building. Look Loy’s remarks are lightly edited.
(Copyright Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868)
He affirmed: “Sport is eminently suited to the building of the society.” But he added an immediate caveat, distinguishing between sports at the elite level and other levels.
“Elite sport at the very top of any one of the sporting disciplines is not about nation building. It is about finance and competition, contracts and public relations, advertising and broadcasting revenues.”
Look Loy has a very nuanced view of sports’ role. He grounds his perspective in his experience in 1962 when he watched the national flag being hoisted for the first time.
The twin-island nation is only the second country in the English-speaking Caribbean to qualify in the tournament’s history, after Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz in 1998.
(Copyright AP Photo/ Shirley Bahadur)
So he cites that “the most moving display of national pride that I have ever seen was when we beat Bahrain that fateful day, that afternoon, Trinidad and Tobago time, and qualified for Germany in 2006. I’ve never seen such a display of patriotism. A national pride and ‘all of we’ is one.
“Like that afternoon on the bus route everywhere. People just poured out into the street, and we forgot all the tribal and petty personal differences that we have.”
He adds: “What Nelson Mandela used the Springboks for is what we should be doing across what we used to call the Third World, now called the Global South, but specifically in Trinidad and Tobago, which is our concern. We should be seeking to do that every day, but we don’t.”
The Rugby World Cup changed the course of post-Apartheid South Africa. 24 June 1995. One team, one country! Why did this not happen to us after the qualification for the World Cup?
Look Loy moans: “Sport is really and truly now a platform, a vehicle for personal objectives and agendas and gain. And very often, we find people coming into the control and management of sports, but at the heart of it, they do not really care.
“And secondly, they do not really know what they’re doing. They occupy the position because it allows them to advance in life and implement their agenda. And we are all part of it.”
(Copyright Beeler.)
The reality?
“Democracy and seeing about the global interests of the population involved in an institution, an organisation or the country is hard work. It demands constant attention. It demands continuous battling.
“It requires an endless commitment of personal and other resources to ensure that the agenda of the broadest population within the organisation within the country is implemented. It is far more than an election where we vote and turn our backs on our business and then leave it to other people who don’t have our interests at heart.”
Our disinterest and unwillingness to fight for what we believe causes us not to perform at the highest levels.
“We are experts, past grand masters, in grumbling outside the halls of power in the corridors. We have a lot to say outside of official discourse and institutional life. We go around the corner, and we talk, text, bad talk, and grumble, but when we can come within the institution to fight, it’s too much trouble.
“People don’t want to take the risk. They don’t want to make an effort. They are afraid of victimisation.”
(Copyright Daniel Prentice/ Wired868.)
The result?
“We have islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. The problem with that is not a lack of talent. We are no less talented than any population across the globe.
“The problem is that we do not commit adequate and proper resources to develop that talent because the people who lead our sports have their agenda for their aggrandisement or do not know what they do. They tend to look to isolate and eliminate opposition.”
Photo: TTFA.
Look Loy suggests: “We must have an assembly line to achieve sustained excellence. We have to identify and grab the talent as early as possible and put them into a production line that gets them a pathway, as people like to call it, to the top elite level. So that’s the long-term vision.
“At the same time, you’re trying the quick fix: to get adequate resources into your national team. You have to identify and recruit the right technical expertise, give them the budget they need, and give them international exposure, as the case might be.
“But if the quick fix alone is your focus, that will be a recurring decimal because the assembly line is not producing people who can come prepackaged to that level. So, if we want consistent success over the long term, we must set up the assembly line. In Trinidad and Tobago sport, we’re not good at that.
Santa Cruz United is one of over 100 licensed academies that are available to young players.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868.
“To consistently produce talent across the board in large enough numbers like they can do in England and Brazil, we must have an assembly line to follow, and investments are made in them along the way.
“They know they will be at a certain level every year because the infrastructure is there in the community clubs, grassroots football, professional clubs, at whatever level, first division, second division, whatever.
“We don’t have that. The National Association must set this up because community clubs do not have the support they need. This is the triumvirate: The National Association, in alliance with private and state capital, must collaborate in developing the basic infrastructure, the grassroots sport.
Photo: Allan V Crane/ CA Images/ Wired868.
“Ensure that these children have a pathway to success so that the nation will use the very best of them.”
Look Loy cites a specific example of the challenges faced by young men. This viewpoint reflects the experience spoken about by Lasana Liburd.
How does one help the boys from less fortunate environments?
“These boys still come in with significant disadvantages. The mothers can’t buy boots. The diet is not what it should be. They don’t have money to come to training. These social, financial, and economic disadvantages still exist, even for boys who have the talent.
Copyright: Nicholas Bhajan/ Arima Araucans Academy.
“Still, they’re playing for this or that school and the domestic situation doesn’t lend itself to giving them optimum resources. So they are at a disadvantage.
“We got a boy into our club. He is from a hotspot in Arima. The domestic situation is not what it should be. A lovely boy with a good attitude. Very humble and soft-spoken. Good boy, no trouble at all. But his environment is not what it should be.
“I bought him boots and a uniform. We are working with him, but he has serious, severe academic problems. How do we get him into an extra set of classes? How do I get him into literacy classes? Is that the responsibility of the football club to which he belongs?
Yorke went on to be the one of the most famous footballers in the world while at Manchester United.
(via Kreol Magazine.)
“Is it the responsibility of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association to say what this boy needs? He needs transport to come to training. He doesn’t have boots. He needs dietary support.
“How else will we build a community—the people within it, and the national community we all belong to—if those with resources don’t make the philosophical, political and financial commitment?
“It becomes hit-and-miss. So this boy with some talent goes down the drain. God knows where he will end up because nobody is paying attention or trying to bring resources as limited as they might be.”
(Copyright Sinead Peters/ Wired868.)
Editor’s Note: Click HERE to read Part Two, as Keith Look Loy explores what sports can do for youths in hotspot areas and why, in his opinion, the Secondary Schools Football League is missing the mark.
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