|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Thanks to the efforts of the Haitian Football Federation (FHF) and the ‘drive to win’ of our Grenadiers, Haiti has qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. After 52 years of waiting, our country is back on the world stage, moving from the court of miracles to the court of the greats.
But a global qualification isn’t built just on individual talent, popular passion, or a group’s determination. It also relies on an ecosystem capable of spotting, training, and supporting young talents from an early age.
That’s exactly the role school sports play in several countries that manage to sustainably feed their national teams.Senegal, Morocco, recent finalists of the Africa Cup of Nations, as well as Cape Verde, which has become one of the revelations of African football, illustrate this reality. For several decades, these countries have institutionalized school sports through regular regional and national competitions. These structures allow for spotting talent, guiding them to specialized schools or academies, and creating a continuous pathway between school, sports training, and national competitions.
Today, in many countries, players who reach the highest level are the result of several years of organized sports practice, starting very early in school.The table below shows some examples of countries where mandatory Physical Education and Sports (PE) and school sports are key pillars of this talent development strategy:
But beyond sports, it’s an entire national vision that needs to be carried forward.
Haiti will fully find its place in the world through arts, culture, sports, and sciences, as long as it invests early in its youth, with rigor, discipline, and resources, starting from preschool.
This is why it’s essential to strengthen teachers’ resources, training, and support for the new mandatory subjects in the revised 2024–2054 curriculum, especially Physical Education and Sports (PE).The same goes for the cooperation agreements between the Ministry of National Education, sports federations, and the relevant institutions, in order to build lasting bridges between school and high-level sports.
As I recently pointed out in the Washington Post, our young people need to dream big and believe in both sports and academic excellence to help rebuild the country.
That said, the Ministries of Education and Sports still need to move in the same direction, not as competing actors, but as a single team, along with the sports federations and the Olympic Committee, serving Haitian youth.
Thanks to our Grenadiers for the inspiration, pride, and fight.
