Sporting excellence in the Caribbean could be understandably thought to lie within the domains of athletics and cricket. In the popular imagination, Jamaican athletes with Olympic gold medals or West Indian cricketers with T20 trophies seem representative of the region. This belies the fact that football is the most popular sport in much of the region.
Only three Caribbean countries have qualified for the final stages, with Haiti being the first in 1974. Jamaica would qualify and record the region’s first win against Japan in 1998. In 2006, Trinidad and Tobago would become the last country from the region to make an appearance at the Finals. None of the three would go past the group stage. Since then both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago would make it to the final rounds of qualifying for CONCACAF but finish bottom of the group. Caribbean national teams do not seem particularly likely to be making another appearance at the World Cup in Qatar.
Yet despite the infrequent appearances on the field at the biggest stage, the Caribbean Football Union, which governs the game in the region is one of the major players on the world football stage and has been for some time.
FIFA is not generally thought of when one thinks of democratic processes. The election results at FIFA for everything from its executive committee to World Cup hosting selection can only be described as opaque and problematic. However, there is a significant marker of democracy in the fact that the world’s governing football body does not rank the votes of any member. Each member has a vote of equal value, no matter how many World Cups their team has won or how low in the rankings their team lies. As the CFU contains 25 members of FIFA (as well as 6 non-members such as Guadeloupe and Bonaire who have teams but have more complicated administrative status, due to being constituent countries or overseas territories of France or The Netherlands), this makes it the dominant member of the regional governing body of CONCACAF and a significant ally for anyone in FIFA.
The North American Football Union and Central American Football Union, who comprise the other regional divisions of CONCACAF, have 3 members and 7 members respectively. In a complete reversal of almost every other sphere of importance in the region, it is in football administration that the Caribbean holds power.