Global Football

The Trinidad and Tobago national women’s team will start its Canada 2015 World Cup campaign on Wednesday night at the Hasely Crawford Stadium without its 52-year-old American head coach Randy Waldrum. Instead, Waldrum’s 33-year-old son, Ben Waldrum, will run the Trinidad and Tobago squad in his father’s place when the …

The Trinidad and Tobago national under-17 football team was brimming with confidence today, despite the shortcomings of the squad’s preparation, as the young “Soca Warriors” set off for the first qualifying phase of its Chile 2015 Under-17 World Cup. “We’re going there with every intention of topping the group and …

In the not-so-feel-good story of the 2014/15 season so far, an obscenely wealthy club downed its poor neighbour 2-0 while over 31,000 spectators looked on in the European Super Cup at Cardiff, Wales. Real Madrid’s starting XI cost a combined TT$3.85 billion (£364 million) in transfer fees, which could get …

“Ask me not,” Everald “Gally” Cummings says, “what he did for the game but what the game did for him.” The former Strike Squad coach is responding to a question about disgraced former FIFA vice-president, Austin Jack Warner. Inviting the normally outspoken national player to be “brutally honest,” we had …

Do not adjust your television set; there is still no meaningful football on the planet at the moment. Well, to be fair, there is the National Super League and United States Major League Soccer. Hey, sometimes you get a dance with the hot chick at the club. And sometimes you …

Chapter six: Bribes took the World Cup to Germany                A RIO RACEHORSE OWNER was paid $1 million to strangle Brazil’s faint hopes of hosting the World Cup. The dark campaign to give the 2006 tournament to Germany involved the humiliation of Brazil and …

The Trinidad and Tobago national women’s football team represented the country’s best chance to qualify for a FIFA senior tournament since the men’s Germany 2006 World Cup. Today, it arguably represents something else entirely. Over the past 24 hours, the national women left for Houston in a fashion that is …

Chapter five: Ricardo’s favourite shoemaker  IF YOU BELIEVE Ricardo, he discovered the world’s most generous bank. It was located in Vaduz, in Europe, it lent him millions and charged interest, in the words of the Senator Alvaro Dias investigation, ‘absurdly below market rates.’ In fact, he never paid any interest …

Twenty-three year old James Rodriguez became the most expensive Colombian footballer of all time yesterday when the former Monaco attacker was unveiled as Real Madrid’s latest Galactico. Rodriguez marked his coming out ceremony at the Estadio Bernabeu by kicking footballs into the crowd and saving one exuberant spectator from being …

Chapter 4: How Mobsters João and Ricardo got rich  Baur au Lac hotel,Zurich October 2010 ‘Mr Teixeira, Mr ‘Teixeira!’ Ricardo turns to look. It is a scruffy, grey-haired man in a Joe Colombo-style beige raincoat shouting at him from the hotel gateway. ‘Mr Teixeira, did you take your bribes through …

Trinidad and Tobago national football team head coach Stephen Hart admitted that the “Soca Warriors” will struggle to keep up with its rivals if the present financial woes continue. Last month, Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) president Raymond Tim Kee and general secretary Sheldon Phillips promised camps for the …

Am I my World Cup brother’s (goal)keeper? Earl Best tackles a delicate subject with all the tact and finesse of an elephant in the Serengeti…or a police raid Behind the Bridge: There is a very real resemblance between Paul Pogba and Blaise Matuidi, the tall, handsome, articulate, intelligent, talented, black, francophone pair of …