Why are the national players being made unwitting accomplices in this “conspiracy” against local football fans?

Russell Latapy is going to play the last game of his career in a national shirt and the people who have stood by him over the years, his friends from the Laventille community and those who have just admired his guile and skill from a distance -- he now having attained an international status that does not permit his fans to rub shoulders with him that easily -- in a large part, cannot afford to purchase tickets for the game.

I would have loved to take my four-year-old son to see Latapy in action, but I am afraid the only way the boy is going to see Latas is on a television screen when he plays in the World Cup next month.

Hopefully, Latapy’s beautiful mother, Joan, will use her influence and urge the midfield maestro to discuss this important issue with the elder statesmen of the team, captain Dwight Yorke and goalkeeper Shaka Hislop and any others who are in the final phase of their national career, so that some other way can be found for the fans to give them a proper farewell.

This government wasting so much money it is insulting but it would not be wasted if there were government-sponsored testimonial matches for all the retiring players, with tickets priced at $60 and $30.

I can hear Jack screaming at that idea, but we have to stand up for our rights as fans and demand better treatment.

For example, why can’t there be a game at the Dwight Yorke Stadium for Yorke?

Can’t the Hasely Crawford Stadium and the Ato Boldon Stadium host matches for Latapy and Hislop respectively?

Or isn’t anyone going to think about the children?

Nobody gives a flying flip-flop about the kids; unfortunately, they don’t have a bargaining chip.

FIFA jefe Austin Jack Warner, the notorious flip-flopper of opposition politics and a man aspiring to high office (God forbid!), sure knows how to take advantage of a situation.

Farewell game?

“Let’s raise the flip-flopping ticket prices!”

One would have thought that with the government intoxicated with Petro-dollars and spending it like a drunken whore in a shopping mall and corporate Trinidad throwing money behind the team, tickets would have been reduced!

When do the common folk get a return on investment?

The football-loving public has had to bear so many indignities -- who can forget the callous way lives were gambled on November 19, 1989 in the interest of one man’s agenda? -- over the years.

As recent as the 2005 campaign, fans were treated like animals, being made to fight to purchase tickets for home matches. It was a system employed by the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) that permitted only the more brazen and uncouth to get tickets, certainly not decent folk.

Yet, it is the administrators who are crying foul.

Sports fans, I was almost moved to tears when Warner, the only voice of the Football Federation, wailed about his financial burden in bearing the high cost of maintaining the national team and his concern for the welfare of our Germany-bound World Cup heroes.

Perhaps, the TTTFF may have been able to assist if the Federation had been allowed to put some of the earnings from our football for the past decade into their bank accounts.

All those World Cup campaigns over the years, packed stadiums and of course, last but by no means least, those lucrative TV rights deals, and the TTFF can’t pay their damn telephone bills?

And Warner flies around the world grinning like a bloody hyena and eating and drinking like an African dictator, boasting about his achievements for local football for anyone who will lend an ear.

This World Cup frenzy can’t finish fast enough for me, I am happy for the players and the country, especially for the 1973 team, the players who hammered regional giants Mexico 4-0 and still did not get to the World Cup.

At least, our champions of the 70s have lived, survived their injustice and will get some sort of compensation by going to the finals in Germany.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of compensation for the football fans who have to keep pouring their money into football without the slightest form of humanity and decency by the TTFF’s puppet administration.

Sports Minister Roger Boynes should use his good office to insist that our retiring players be treated properly, that all football fans get an opportunity to see them before they ride off into the sunset.

Boynes’ government is throwing it away by the billions on expansive redundant projects; clearly, it will not take much money for the State to work out an arrangement with the TTFF to ensure that a game or series of matches be arranged at an opportune time in the aftermath of the World Cup to give “the people” their just due.

With Hislop missing the Peru match because of his commitment to West Ham United, the giant goalkeeper still has to announce his retirement. Perhaps, that opens the door for the other senior players to try and right an enormous wrong against the poor football fans of this country.

How about Holland vs TnT?

Maybe Leo can hook us up!