JON ARNOLD — Stephane Auvray shakes a group of reporters’ hands at the end of an interview session and begins to walk toward the Guadeloupe team bus, but he doesn’t get far.
It takes him several more minutes to finally arrive at his destination, with that scene repeating itself multiple times after his team’s Gold Cup loss to the United States, 1-0. He’s frustrated and tired, not in the mood to chat. Yet, the midfielder always stops and talks to anyone who asks, in French or English, no matter if they’re an internationally renowned soccer journalist or a novice.
How could he not?
Maybe this interview will be the one. The one that some higher-up will read and get to thinking. The one that will make a change in the Fédération Francaise de Football position. The one that will give Guadeloupe a chance at FIFA membership, which in turn would give them a shot at making the ultimate stage.
“If somebody’s hearing me tonight, and they think it can help, it is welcome because we have a lot of potential,” Auvray said. “We want to express ourselves worldwide because we deserve it. Young players in Guadeloupe deserve it. The players all over Europe deserve it. Guadeloupe deserves it. We do everything we can on the field, but it doesn’t change much if nobody helps us politically.”
The problem for Auvray, who has played in every Gold Cup match in which the team has played, and his teammates is Guadeloupe isn’t a country. Geographically, it’s tiny. Even if you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy to mistake the Caribbean archipelago with a population of around 400,000 for a spilled crumb of food on your map.
France recognizes it as only an overseas department, which functions more or less like a U.S. state. For the most part it works out well for Guadeloupe. Residents are French citizens and are bequeathed with the same rights as those in Paris or anywhere else. For soccer though, it is the problem.
FIFA will permit non-internationally recognized regions or states into the organization, but only if the dependent country’s football association grants approval. It’s why Puerto Rico and Guam could (in theory) make the World Cup Finals and Guadeloupe cannot.
Auvray still has hope, though. Two lands of the French Republic compete as FIFA members, albeit they aren’t in the same category as Guadeloupe. French Polynesia, classified as an overseas territory, has been a FIFA member (as the Tahitian Football Federation) since 1990. New Caledonia, a special collectivity after a 1998 accord, was encouraged by the FFF president to apply for FIFA membership in 2000. The federation was admitted into FIFA in 2004.
It’s a bit of a long shot, and Auvray understands that, but those lands give him the glimmer of hope he needs to keep pushing for FIFA membership.
“I think it is (possible) because if Tahiti and New Caledonia can do it, we can do it,” he said. “But people have to wake up in Guadeloupe and really fight for it because it’s too hard. There are a couple of players, the last time we played with them was two years ago, and it’s difficult. You cannot build a team in one week. It’s hard.”
Many of the players ply their trade in the Ligue 2, the second French league. Some have grown up in France and play for Guadeloupe based on their family heritage. There’s nothing to lose for them, since the French team could still cap anyone on the Guadeloupe squad.
Aurelien Collin, a defender for Sporting Kansas City who hails from northern France, knew a couple of players on the team growing up and came to watch the team train in Kansas City. He said he’d love to see Guadeloupe gain FIFA membership but is skeptical it could happen.
“Yeah, I hope. It would be very good for Guadeloupe, but I don’t think it’s possible because it’s a French colony,” he said. “Guadeloupe is France, you know, so they play in Gold Cup and cannot go to the World Cup.”
Without the luxuries afforded to FIFA members, Guadeloupe might seem to have an impossible task at the Gold Cup: Get together for a week or so, get some team chemistry going, and then go try to beat the United States and other CONCACAF nations.
“That’s our main problem because we can not really play together throughout the season, whereas all the other teams have FIFA days, they have friendlies, they have the World Cup qualifying and I think it shows on the field,” Auvray said. “Even if we have good players, we have trouble to have good organization on the field because unfortunately we can not reunite very often, and that’s our main problem.”
Even without seeing each other often, Les Gwada Boys have still achieved some success in the highest profile tournament the team can enter.
The first time Guadeloupe made it to the Gold Cup was in 2007, by way of finishing fourth in the Caribbean Nations Cup. They drew with Haiti in their opening match of the tournament and shocked Canada in their second. It was enough to get them through to the knockout stages and into a matchup with Honduras.
Again, the team pulled an upset before Mexico final got the better of the debutantes in the semifinals, 1-0. Franck Grandel was named top goalkeeper of the tournament, and the Guadeloupeans were riding high.
They performed well again in 2009, getting to the tournament by placing third in the Caribbean Nations Cup. Again they were through to the quarterfinals, this time with six points from wins against Panama and Nicaragua. Costa Rica bounced the island from the tournament, 5-1 in the quarterfinals.
Despite the prior triumphs, Guadeloupe was still more or less an enigma heading into this year’s tournament.
The lack of a FIFA membership means they play no matches outsides of the Caribbean Nations Cup, of which they lost to Jamaica on penalties in 2010, and the Coupe de l’Outre Mer.
That competition, taking place in France, pits the aforementioned Tahiti and New Caledonia against all the other French overseas departments in the same boat as Guadeloupe (this includes Martinique and French Guiana, other CONCACAF and CFU members). Guadeloupe took third in this competition in both 2010 and 2008.
Those matches don’t exactly get a lot of attention, which presents a challenge in scouting for Guadeloupe if nothing else for opposing managers. The United States had the advantage of playing the team last in the group stage, but with Guadeloupe playing without 11 men in both previous games because of red cards, even then it was hard to know what to expect.
“They’re a talented team. We’ve looked at these (two) games, but in addition to that (USMNT fitness coach) Pierre Barrieu has done the scouting of Guadeloupe and knows a number of players from the second league in France,” Bob Bradley, U.S. manager, said before the match. “So, we’re familiar with a number of games they’ve played, the kind of seasons they’ve had.
“It is a bit odd when a team you’re playing in the third game has spent so much of the first two games down a man, but they’ve responded well.”
Bradley was right, Guadeloupe had responded well in their first two matches, but responding well was not what they’d hoped to do coming into the tournament.
“We’re frustrated because we think that if we played at least one of these two games with eleven men there would have been a different result,” Auvray said before Guadeloupe’s third match.
To be fair, Auvray easily could be right about Guadeloupe’s chances had they stayed at full strength, even after a nightmare start. Facing Panama in their first match, Panama put one by Grandel, still Guadeloupe’s top choice keeper, in the 29th minute and then another three minutes later. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Mickael Tacalfred is sent off for stomping a Panamanian player in the 38th. Still, Guadeloupe charged back, somehow conceding only one more goal (it’s scored on a penalty). Brice Jovial, a striker for the team, nets a brace, and it looks as though they might come all the way back for a point. In the end, though, they can’t find the back of the net a third time.
With Guadeloupe hoping to open better against Canada in their second match, they instead face the prospect of playing nearly the fully 90 minuntes down a man after Jean-Luc Lambourde is sent off in the fourth minute. They’re able to mostly weather Canada’s attack but again concede a penalty. It’s converted by Dwayne De Rosario, and the goal stands for a 1-0 loss.
There was still a chance for the team to once again make the knock out stages, but they’d left it until the last game. Before the tournament it was presumed the United States would rest some of their stars, giving Guadeloupe a window of opportunity for more points. But after a shocking loss to Panama, the U.S. needed points in the match to move on to the knockout stages.
“I don’t know what our chances are, but we’ll do our best to win that game with two goals difference because we can do it,” Auvray said before the match, referring to the margin needed to secure passage at the time. “It’s football and you never know. Anything can happen. We have good players and if we are organized enough and if we have 11 men on the field until the end, I think we can do it.”
It was clear, though, Guadeloupe would be massive underdogs, especially with so much on the line for the United States.
After two terrible starts, Guadeloupe are almost over the moon within three minutes. They win a corner kick, which is knuckled into the box. U.S. keeper Tim Howard knocks it away and Landon Donovan lunges in to knock the ball away and save the Americans from conceding an early goal. The clearance was necessary, but it goes straight to the right foot of Stephane Zubar. The defender, who plays in League Two in England, has an open shot, but his effort hits the crossbar.
It’s the only real chance Guadeloupe will have all game. The U.S. has nearly the opposite game with a plethora of chances but coming away with one goal.
They had played well, but for the first time in their history they were bounced from the Gold Cup in the group stages. Not only that, but the record looked pretty abysmal. Three games. No points.
“We are disappointed because we have zero points, especially when we showed that we could have gone to the second round, as I always say, if we had 11 men for all three games, it would have been a different matter,” Auvray said. “This is how it is, unfortunately, but sometimes sport is difficult. We showed something good tonight.
“That was the most important for us, knowing that we were out before the game, before we started the game. We showed that we have a future and if we get the opportunity to express ourselves worldwide, and if we can get to be part of the FIFA, I think we can do great things”
Like the end of World Cup cycles for FIFA members, there are many changes on the horizon for the Guadeloupe team. While that might not include a FIFA membership, at the very least there will be plenty of new faces for the Guadeloupe side.
Some even speculate Roger Salnot, the coach who has manned Guadeloupe in all their Gold Cup runs, could be on the way out.
“I have a contract until 2012, so I’m going to keep working with the team. It might only be my last Gold Cup,” he said through a translator.
Another mainstay of the Gold Cup teams, Auvray himself, said he is evaluating his involvement with the team.
Without FIFA member-status it would be tough for him to see himself back on the team.
“I’m thinking about (leaving the team) because really, we have to do something about it,” he said. “It’s hard. It’s like swimming, swimming, swimming and then being in the same spot after four years. So after a while, you just stop swimming and you come out of the water. This is how I feel.
“A couple players are going to stop their international career because, as I said, it’s frustrating to play the Gold Cup, then nothing happens until two years after, when we start back with the same program we have. There’s a new generation coming up, so I hope they do as good as we did in 2007.”
Guadeloupe will “always have new players” according to Auvray, and even with the potential ending of an era, it would be a surprise not to see them in upcoming Gold Cups.
And while this year’s didn’t end as he hoped, the player who now returns to Sporting Kansas City for the foreseeable future still sees some positives.
“We’re proud because it’s very hard. It’s very, very difficult,” Auvray said. “We lost the three games with one-goal differences and it’s very, very good. 2007, 2009 we were able to win one game, two games, but I think the spirit was the same. Some times sport is hard, and this is how it was this year.”
The question for Guadeloupe now seems to be how will it be in future years. They have plenty of time to figure it out, though. With no FIFA dates to worry about, they won’t play again until next year at the earliest.