Trinidad and Tobago Is Taking a Joy Ride

Former Howard star Shaka Hislop plays in England but is a force in goal for Trinidad and Tobago, the smallest nation in the World Cup. (Matt Dunham - AP)

NUREMBERG, Germany, June 14 -- After England and Trinidad and Tobago played their first games of the World Cup last weekend, their postgame reactions said more about each nation's expectations than the actual scores of the matches.

England beat Paraguay, 1-0, and is the only team in Group B with a victory. But its performance was deemed sub-par -- even "insipid" -- by the English media and planted seeds of doubt in the minds of England's supporters. A typical headline: "Not Good Enough!" from the Sunday Mirror.

Trinidad and Tobago tied Sweden, 0-0, a surprising result that set off wild celebrations and has Soca Warrior fans dreaming of the second round. The country's president, George Maxwell Richards, told the team that he has canceled his flight home on June 21 -- the day after the Soca Warriors play Paraguay in their final group game -- because he expects them to make the second round.

On Thursday in Nuremberg, Trinidad and Tobago, the smallest nation to appear in the World Cup, faces England, the country that claims it invented soccer. The team that brings fans who sing and dance and hold carnival parades plays the team that brings thousands of supporters (an estimated 70,000 are expected) and the threat of unruly behavior. A group of unknown players will take the field with some of the richest and most recognizable stars in the sport.

"Nobody has to explain to us or to me that on paper, there is a lot of difference in the amount of talent," said Leo Beenhakker, the coach of Trinidad and Tobago, a nation of 1.1 million. "We know we have to compensate something because if we start playing just based on our talent and we let England play just based on their talent, then we will have a very difficult match. But we showed against Sweden that in football you can compensate for a difference of talent, and that's playing with a lot of courage and a lot of passion."

The Soca Warriors also will be playing with a sense of familiarity with their opponents. Trinidad and Tobago's most famous player, midfielder Dwight Yorke, is well known in England, where he spent 16 years as a professional. He was teammates with David Beckham at Manchester United when they won the treble -- the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup -- in 1999. Yorke currently plays for Sydney FC, but he trained with Manchester United after the Australian league completed its season in March.

Trinidad and Tobago has eight players who currently play in England and another six who are in Scotland, but only goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, the star of the Sweden match, is on a team in the Premiership, and he doesn't even start for West Ham United. Still, England lost, 1-0, to Northern Ireland -- a team filled with players who toil in the lower English divisions -- in qualifying, a result that often was referenced on Wednesday.

"I really hope that we can't compare tomorrow evening to what we did in Northern Ireland," England Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson said.

"Realistically, there's a big chance England will go on to win the World Cup, but they might find us awkward because most of our players play in England and Scotland and we've matched the pace of the British game with a Caribbean style," midfielder Chris Birchall told England's Guardian newspaper.

Birchall plays for Port Vale in England's League One (two steps below the Premiership), and he once dreamed of playing for England, as did Hislop. Birchall's mother was born in Port of Spain, but it wasn't until his agent contacted Trinidad and Tobago's soccer federation that Birchall joined the Soca Warriors. He made his debut in May 2005, becoming the first white man to play for the country in 60 years.

Hislop was born in Hackney, East London, but moved to Trinidad when he was 2 years old. He came to the United States for college, leading Howard to the 1988 NCAA championship game and graduating in 1992, and has played in England ever since. England midfielder Joe Cole, who started at West Ham but currently plays for Chelsea, credited Hislop with easing his transition to the Premiership.

"It will be a very big occasion for me when, all being well, I line up against England for Trinidad and Tobago tomorrow, but someone asked the other day if I would have divided loyalties," Hislop wrote in a column in the Times of London. "Divided loyalties? You have to be joking. Quite a few of us in the squad play in England, but that makes us even more determined to win this game."

Both coaches held news conferences on Wednesday evening at Franken Stadium, the site of the game. Eriksson's session was packed with reporters and at least 30 television cameras (112 members of the English media have been credentialed for Thursday's game, compared with 15 from Trinidad and Tobago). Eriksson came to the session armed with FIFA match statistics to prove that England's performance wasn't as bad as the press made it out to be. But that didn't placate the questioners. A sample exchange between a reporter and Eriksson:

Question: "Sven, you won your first game in the group, and yet you've had to spend four days reading a certain amount of criticism in the papers. What do you think you and your team could do tomorrow to make everyone here happy?"

Response: "Impossible. Absolutely impossible. I don't open a newspaper since I came to Germany, and my intention is to go on like that."

Roughly half of the reporters left the room just before it was Beenhakker's turn to speak. Beenhakker greeted an Australian reporter with a "G'day from down under!" and congratulated him on the Socceroos' performance against Japan. While Eriksson was forced to defend his decision to give the players a day off on Monday following such a performance, Beenhakker said that he did the same thing and made it seem as if that was the natural thing to do, adding, "You're working with human beings."

During the first 15 minutes of England's training session, Eriksson chatted with his assistant coaches and stood away from his players, who played games of eight on two. In the first part of Trinidad and Tobago's practice, Beenhakker looked more like the coach of a youth team than a man who has directed Ajax, Real Madrid and the Dutch national team. He set up the cones for a drill, handed out colored pinnies and encouraged his players to "warm up your bodies and warm up your minds!" as they jogged along the sidelines.

"We're going to play it with a smile," Beenhakker said. "We know our place, we know where we are, we have our feet on our ground and we do our utmost to have a good result and to play well, and once again we enjoy it. You have to enjoy it. It's a dream come true, and that's exactly how we're going to play these matches."