Click to view full size

I find the com­mon or gar­den va­ri­ety Eu­ro­pean league foot­ball served up to us on any giv­en day by lo­cal ca­ble tele­vi­sion to be im­mense­ly bor­ing. I much pre­fer to watch a match from the Sau­di Pro League or the South African Pre­mier­ship than suf­fer through the pre­dictabil­i­ty of Man­ches­ter City ver­sus Leeds Unit­ed or Paris Saint-Ger­main against Lens.

So a few weeks ago, I was in­trigued by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of De­porti­vo Tachi­ra (Venezuela) at home to The Strongest (Bo­livia) in CON­MEBOL's (South Amer­i­can Con­fed­er­a­tion, for the unini­ti­at­ed) Co­pa Lib­er­ta­dores. I was not dis­ap­point­ed by these two clubs, which are un­known to the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal foot­ball fans who con­strain them­selves to gorg­ing on Eu­ro­pean fare.

I saw a very good crowd, a good lev­el of play, for­eign play­ers from Ar­genti­na, Colom­bia, Pana­ma, Uruguay, and Al­varo Re­co­ba (the for­mer In­ter Mi­lan and Uruguay star) as head coach on the Venezue­lan bench. So, I asked my­self the ques­tion I have al­ways asked my­self - why does Trinidad and To­ba­go not have play­ers in a league that is lit­er­al­ly next door, while we send play­ers to non­de­script clubs in Viet­nam, In­dia, North­ern Cyprus, Oman, the Unit­ed States and sundry oth­er points?