19773: (Craig) NYT: Haitian Players Watch the Ball and the Tube (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>


Sports of The Times: Haitian Players Watch the Ball and the Tube
March 4, 2004
By GEORGE VECSEY

IN their spare time, they stare at the television: the
roaming mobs, the bodies in the street, the fire and the
smoke.

They make frantic phone calls, hoping their families are
all right as their homeland, Haiti, goes through another
wave of terror.

Meanwhile, they represent their country the only way they
know how, by kicking a soccer ball in a public park in
South Florida.

The players on the national team of Haiti have no money
coming from home, as they prepare for qualifying games for
the 2006 World Cup. On March 13 at the Orange Bowl, Haiti
will meet the United States in an exhibition that soccer
people call a friendly. This is a team and a nation that
sorely need a friendly.

They play through the fear, citizens of a nation that has
known little but terror and poverty. At the very least, the
players are coached by a man who understands the concerns
of marginal people.

"Before I took this job, I needed to know Haiti," said
Fernando Clavijo, a Uruguayan immigrant who became a member
on the United States World Cup squad of 1994.

"You couldn't believe the poverty," he said. "You had to
smell it. But the incredible thing is how beautiful and
clean everybody was, the kids going to school. I never felt
any fear. This is what I felt from the beginning."

Clavijo took the job as coach of Haiti on the provision
that the players would be based in South Florida, where he
makes his home. They were living in modest motels, but as
the Aristide government fell apart in recent weeks, the
national federation stopped sending money.

With the players essentially stranded, Clavijo says, "I
invest in the team," meaning he spends rather than earns.

It is Clavijo's way of putting something back. Now 48,
Clavijo came to New York more than a quarter of a century
ago, a soccer player without papers and without a
professional team. He worked in restaurants on Long Island
- "The best busboy they ever had," Clavijo said the other
day.

One night the feds blocked the doors and the windows and
started collaring the desperate people who washed dishes
and cut vegetables. Somebody at the restaurant stripped the
apron off the "best busboy" and sat him down with some
patrons and handed him a bottle of red.

When the feds had made their haul, Clavijo was weak in the
knees, but he still had a place in this country. By 1994,
he was an American citizen, playing against Brazil in the
World Cup on the Fourth of July. He is grateful for how far
he has traveled.

"People in South America complain about poverty, but they
have no idea," said Clavijo, who still has ties to Uruguay.
"In Haiti I saw people taking turns to sleep because they
don't have enough beds."

Although he coached the New England Revolution in Major
League Soccer and observed his good friend Bora Milutinovic
handling disparate people on the United States team,
Clavijo was not prepared for coaching a national team whose
president has stepped down under duress.

"There are some guys who are celebrating and some guys who
are not," Clavijo said. "You don't even know."

Last Saturday night in an exhibition in Nicaragua, he sent
his starting lineup on the field, only to learn that the
home of Peter Germain, one of his starters, had been burned
down in Haiti.

"The game started and his mind was not there," Clavijo
said. "Should I take him out? If I do, I may destroy him.
But he is a professional. He does his job."

Clavijo speaks Spanish, English and a little French, but he
does not understand the Creole of most of his players. He
finds himself morphing into his mentor, Bora, who could use
a Serbian verb, a Spanish noun and an Italian adjective,
maybe even veer into English, all in the same sentence.

Language, however, is the least of it. Some Haitian players
have visas that allow re-entry to the United States and
others do not. Clavijo must do the paperwork and the
liaison work himself.

There is a bright spot. A private development company,
Caribbean American Corporate Services, has found apartments
for the players, and is trying to raise money through
endorsements. The company exists to "empower communities
here and in the Caribbean," said Linda C?sar, its
spokeswoman.

The company has agreed to subsidize some new expenses,
although C?sar quickly added, "We understand there are past
issues, but we take responsibility only from when we
started."

The players pursue their long-shot hope of qualifying for
the World Cup, which Haiti did once, in 1974. They also
hope to visit home. For now, they practice twice a day,
which still leaves time to watch horrifying images on a
television screen, a long way from home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/sports/soccer/04VECS.html?ex=1079380777&ei=1&en=4fbde76958b1e351
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company