Saint Lucian Football at the Crossroads

Ahead of the second season of the Saint Lucia Semi-Professional Football League, the local governing body for football announced that the competition would be used as a testing ground for anti-doping and efforts to showcase fair play. That was three weeks after Saint Lucia hosted the Concacaf Congress and Caribbean Football Union Congress, with local football chief Lyndon Cooper elected president of the latter body.

On the pitch, meanwhile, the local football fraternity had had a lot going on. GMC United won the Saint Lucia Football Association Inc Club Tournament for the first time, beating previous winners Platinum FC at the Soufriere Stadium. Last weekend, at the  Technical Centre in Grande Riviere, Dennery, Canaries beat Mabouya Valley 4-3 in an exciting penalty shootout to win the inaugural Under-12 District League Primary Schools boys’ football tournament. The second tournament gets underway right away, with 14 unseeded teams playing preliminary matches. 

Women are in action as well. For International Women’s Day in March, the SLFA held activities to empower and uplift coaches, technical officials, and players. The ongoing Under-14 Girls Tournament, being played at the La Fargue Playing Field in Choiseul, will be closely followed by the launch of the 2025 Senior Women’s Football Championship, from Sunday April 27th at the Phillip Marcellin Ground in Vieux Fort.

All that is to say that the beautiful game is in a good place in Saint Lucia at the moment, with an eye firmly on the future, but effort being put into developing teams at the highest level of senior football as well. If anything, the local association tends to undersell its work, often leading to criticism that “nothing is happening” in local football. That’s far from the case, based just on that brief overview of recent and current initiatives being undertaken by the FA. But it is certainly true that there is scope for improvement, and some of that has to do with the men’s national team, for many the barometer for success in the sport.

The men’s team ended its most recent Concacaf Nations League campaign in disappointment last year. Under head coach and iconic former Trinidad and Tobago international, Stern John, the Piton Boyz came within two wins of qualifying for the Gold Cup for the first time. What followed instead were three losses, in which they shipped 12 goals. Saint Lucia finished second in the group, and remained in League B, the second tier of the CNL. That’s been the level of the national team for more than two decades, though. Good enough to compete at the top of the second division, but missing the spark to go toe-to-toe with more professional teams.

In the late nineties and early oughts, teams featuring the likes of Earl ‘Ball Hog’ Jean, Elijah Joseph, and Titus ‘Titi’ Elva were not built on domestic football. Those three played under former national coach Stuart Charles-Fevrier with VIBE CT 105 W Connection in the Trinidad and Tobago Professional Football League. They were far from alone. Something like a dozen Saint Lucians came through the doors in Couva, including current assistant coach with the men’s senior national team, Francis ‘Baba’ Lastic, and Vieux Fort head coach Jamil Joseph.

Even then, the national team also included foreign-born players of Saint Lucian descent. After all, Jamaica had qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup largely by mining its diaspora. The Saint Lucia national anthem exhorts sons and daughters, wheresoever they may roam, to “love, oh love, our island home.” Coming from the USA, Jarvin Skeete slotted in seamlessly. Former Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate Warren Hackett played 21 games in the back four. Ken Charlery’s fit was perhaps not quite as tight up front.

Recently, the team has similarly comprised a mix of backgrounds. There have been local-born players who have gone on to ply their trade regionally and further afield, in the USA, Canada, Germany, England, and Poland, inter alia. Vino Barclett has been exceptional in the Jamaica Premier League, the young man from Vieux Fort recently earning the title of Best Caribbean Goalkeeper. He and defender Melvin Doxilly have both won the JPL twice, once together. 

The captain, Terell Thomas, has been the bellwether of British-born footballers reconnecting with their heritage, in addition to the likes of Joshua Solomon-Davies and Janoi Donacien, born here, but having spent most of their lives overseas. Prolific and athletic forward Caniggia Elva, though he moved to Canada as a teenager, was being courted by their national team, before choosing to follow his father and uncle in gold and cerulean blue.

That’s not at all to say that there has been no room for players who train at Dames Playing Field or The Sab. John has elevated some of the youngsters who have done the nation proud over the past eight years or so. He has been unafraid to include the likes of Kegan Caull and Shaquan Nelson, whilst incorporating young veterans from local club and league competitions.

Some have argued that the character of domestic football is changing. They point to the vibrant local scene and the national team’s successes in the eighties and early nineties. Saint Lucia finished third in the second Shell Caribbean Cup in 1991, just five years after joining Concacaf. But, as Saint Lucia’s profile on the regional governing body’s website reads: “It has been a challenge to sustain that success.”

If anything, the men’s national team has been stable of late, which has not always been the case since the turn of the century. The SLFA and the technical staff of the senior squad must continue to battle on multiple fronts. We need to keep embracing our diaspora, for one. Most of the players that have come through via that route are engaged in the second or third tiers of English football, or lower. But there are players in the English Premier League and other top divisions worldwide who are eligible to pull on the national colours.

Simultaneously, the local game must be built through initiatives such as the Under-12 competitions, the SPFL, and the women’s tournament. And efforts must be redoubled to expose our local-born boys and girls to higher levels of coaching and competition. This must be a major strategic pillar for Saint Lucian football, to get young men and women not only into schools in the United States but also into leagues in North America and Europe, consolidating football as the sport of choice, and thus broadening the talent pool.

All in all, it’s crucial that the governing body charts the course and stays true to it. A longitudinal approach has reaped benefits at the youth level. The young Boyz made Concacaf finals in 2015, and won honours more recently Under-14 and Under-15 level, with teams that had trained together and played together for at least two or three years. The future can be bright for Saint Lucian football, but the flame must be kept burning.