Polack Post: Caribbean Football – David and Goliath
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
The national football team from the tiny Curaçao pulled off an unbelievable feat to become the smallest country to qualify for the World Cup. Jamaica was able to achieve that honor in 1998. They are not alone in the raft of small nations to qualify this year including Haiti, Cape Verde and Panama.
Regrettably the coach of Curaçao left before the game and the coach of Jamaica left after their game. If nothing else, it minimizes the often overblown effect of a coach when the team are able to manage by themselves, and successfully. Writ large the success of teams reduced to ten players after a red card.
It may also be that actual leadership falls to the team captain or leaders of sub squads like defense or strikers. It may also be that outside of photo ops and the rotating quasi positive press releases or sound bites, a nation can actually progress better outside of the white noise of political one-upmanship.
Nowadays, political leaders are more referees than coaches, especially in their own parties.
Perhaps what is called for, especially in times of disaster or other political pandering, is less chat and more thoughtful performance by bringing a nation together, all of it.
Jamaica and other small islands have had political leaders in the past that are more measured, dignified or possess gravitas in a post for which they were not only elected, but for which they possessed experience and capability. Think Eric Williams, Norman Manley or Donald Sangster.
The accomplishment of Curaçao could also be viewed as an asymmetric victory commonly found in past conflicts between much larger nations and countries with comparatively very little, like Afghanistan or Vietnam.
The Eastern Caribbean win should conch shell a much greater warning to those who would wish to underestimate the resilience of a small nation against a much larger invader who ended up facing a determined group of allied nations.
Sometimes it is best to threaten and then just move on.
The exception of course would be those nations that self invaded with tainted elections, manipulated publicly directed information, maintained power by might instead of true democracy, pressured the media or imprisoned the opposition. It might be that some in the Caribbean are going in that direction.
The streets will disabuse them of that notion in the fullness.
Ask Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh about her death penalty.
Notes
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cpwvg0w4ljrt
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
