Home 2006 – Finta
The Country
Haiti is the Caribbean’s oldest sovereign state, having achieved independence from France way back in 1804. Unfortunately, it’s also the poorest nation in the entire western hemisphere, their cause not helped by a procession of natural disasters – notably the devastating 2010 earthquake which killed over 250,000 people – or indeed by 29 years (1957-86) of brutal dictatorship under Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and subsequently his son Jean-Claude, aka “Baby Doc”, who between them clung grimly to power for the best part of three decades despite sounding like a pair of ineffective cough syrups.
Of the two, Daddy’s antics were unquestionably the more extravagant owing to an obsession with Voodoo. In 1963 he even tried to claim responsibility for the Kennedy assassination, citing a sinister hex as the murder weapon, apparently unswayed by the rather obvious bullet holes newly installed in the stricken President’s head. Speaking of spiritual practices, it’s often said that Haiti is 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant and 100% Voodoo, presumably by people who produce very messy pie charts. As a result, masses can be energetic affairs, supplementing traditional Christian hymns and prayers with pulsating drum beats, throaty singing and other raucous behaviours that probably wouldn’t go down too well in a more traditional church.
Sometimes lucky worshippers are supposedly possessed by spirits, usually indicated by increasingly frenzied dancing lasting for hours. This is seen as highly desirable and a great honour for the individual, but probably isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs for those charged with getting them off to sleep that night.
Fun little bonus fact: Haitian Creole (the local language derived from French and various African dialects) gave us the word ‘zombie.’ Rather than the shuffling, brain-scoffing creature of pop culture lore, it’s actually an archaic term for ‘slave.’ This stems from an historic fear, apparently rife amongst local plantation workers, that their decaying corpses would be reanimated and forced to continue picking crops by their masters, for whom the acquisition of a food hygiene certificate was presumably a fairly low rung on their priority ladder. So, anybody put off holidaying in Haiti for fear of being chewed to death by the undead can rest assured this isn’t the case, and that they should instead be put off by the whole corrupt, crumbling, poverty stricken death trap straddling a major fault line thing.
The National Team
For those accustomed to the US and Mexico’s dominance of North American football, it might come as a surprise to learn that Haiti were once the kings of CONCACAF. Their national team may have made just a solitary World Cup appearance at West Germany 1974*, but it was certainly no fluke. In fact they produced one of the tournament’s iconic moments when, shortly after halftime of their opening game against Italy, pacy forward Emmanuel Sanon broke clear, calmly rounded goalkeeper Dino Zoff and stroked the Haitians into a shock lead. Famously, this was the first international goal Zoff had conceded in 1,143 minutes (still a record), and although the Azzurri recovered to win 3-1, Haiti certainly didn’t look out of place sharing the pitch with such illustrious opposition. Then the bubble violently, and very publicly burst. Shortly after the Italy match, defender Ernst Jean-Joseph failed a doping test, leading to his forced extraction from the team hotel by government goons before being beaten up in full view of the world’s press and bundled off home to Haiti to face whatever the opposite of a hero’s welcome is. Their morale abruptly shattered, the team were subsequently eviscerated 7-0 by Poland before concluding with a semi-respectable 4-1 loss to Argentina. Oh well, never a dull moment. Or indeed a sane one.**
*Really, Haiti should have qualified for successive World Cups. They missed out on Mexico 1970 due to FIFA taking a big steaming dump all over logic by deciding aggregate scores wouldn’t count for the decisive play-off against El Salvador. Instead, with the Haitians losing the first leg 2-1 but winning the return 3-0, this was deemed to be 1-1 overall – as in one win each – and a third tie was required, which the Salvadorans won 1-0 and went to the finals instead. Daft.
**For the purposes of blog space, I’ve tried to be concise. Haiti’s world cup campaign really does make for some fascinating subject matter, more than I could do justice to in this medium. For anyone interested in further reading, I recommend Jon Spurling’s excellent book ‘Death Or Glory, The Dark History Of The World Cup’, which features an entire chapter on the “Voodoo Gangsters”.
Since this brief but eventful boom period, Haiti’s football fortunes have taken on a direction more consistent with that of the country itself, i.e. that of a chronically depressed lemming packing scissors for a bungee trip. Since 1982 the national side have failed even to make the final round of World Cup qualification – reaching a nadir in 2014 when they were dispatched by lowly Antigua & Barbuda – while promising local talent is occasionally lost via defections to the United States or, more tragically, via natural disaster. There have been recent, tentative signs of a recovery, however, not least at the 2019 Gold Cup, where the Haitians surged to the semi finals, beating Costa Rica and Canada en route, before being edged out by an extra time penalty against eventual champions Mexico. Any talk of challenging for a spot at Qatar 2022 based on this run is perhaps premature. But, with the confirmed World Cup expansion in 2026 growing enticingly closer, and with Mexico, the US and Canada all potentially removed from the qualification picture due to hosting duties, a second gatecrashing of the finals isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
The Shirt
Back in my more restrained collecting days, when my dearest wish was simply to have a shirt representing every nation to have played at the World Cup, Haiti were a persistent impediment to this ambition. This design, made by Brazilian sportswear company Finta, first surfaced in 2006 on a site called UKsoccershop, who have since garnered notoriety for apparently being run from some guy’s bedroom, and for doling out the kind of customer service that would give Ryanair executives a big chubby on. Perhaps fortunate then that I chose to forgo purchase at the time – I was a student, you see, and thus not keen to spend money that would necessitate another week of Sainsbury’s basics pizzas – but seeing as it took another five years or so to finally nail this shirt down, when Subside Sports randomly started selling it in 2011, I could might have saved myself a few hundred instances of fruitlessly tapping “Haiti football shirt” into Google.
As for the design, let’s just say I was far more excited to finally get my hands on it than its serviceable, run of the mill aesthetics warranted. It’s a nice enough shirt, don’t get me wrong, just a little plain. For some reason, every example seems to come bearing a number seven on the back, presumably representative of some star Haitian player from the time period, even if the designers weren’t sufficiently arsed to bother slapping his evidently forgettable name on the garment. Rude.