🇦🇮 'Teams should be scared of Anguilla' - Confidence rising after Concacaf's lowest-ranked team finally wins
Anguilla is hoping to prove doubters wrong - at home and abroad
No one was quite sure how to react when the final whistle blew. Fair enough.
It had been more than a decade since Anguilla last won an official match, and nobody from that 2010 win over Saint Martin in Caribbean Cup qualification was still around. That’s life when you’re the worst-ranked team in Concacaf and in the penultimate place in the FIFA rankings.
But Anguilla had beaten Turks and Caicos Islands 2-0, snapping a 36-game winless run in official matches.
Captain Germain Hughes ended up hugging goalkeeper Jelani Lawrence. Forward Lamar Carpenter, who had scored and been subbed off, ran onto the field and did a little dance before going back to the bench to find a teammate to celebrate with. Others just stood and smiled.
“It felt great,” Hughes told me. “Most times, we concede and don’t score. This time, we did score and it felt great. Words can’t explain.”
It’s what Hughes says next, though, that signals he and his Anguilla teammates are looking to do a lot more celebrating in the future.
“I was hoping for another positive result against Belize, but I still think we made some strides,” Hughes says of the 1-0 loss a few days later. “It was a positive step. We didn’t get the result we wanted, but yes we still feel content and are optimistic about going to Belize and getting a result there.”
There have been signs an Anguilla improvement was coming. As chronicled in this newsletter in 2020, the pandemic allowed Anguilla to reset the way it approached its position in international soccer.
There were friendly victories in 2022, a couple of Concacaf Nations League draws and, most notably, March’s penalty shootout win after draws in both legs of a series with TCI.1 That meant Anguilla advanced from a World Cup qualification round for the first time ever.
The growth hasn’t been linear, though. “It’s been a roller-coaster ride,” says Kieron Lake-Bryan, an England-based player whose cousin on the island told the federation to give Lake-Bryan and his brothers a call. “and now we’re at the point where not only are we challenging in games, we’re getting clean sheets.
“Teams should be scared of us. They should be scared of Anguilla because you can’t block what’s meant to shine.”
The arrival of Stern John on the island to coach the team gave the squad a boost in 2020, but Lake-Bryan said his departure for Saint Lucia in 2022 took the team “back to square one”
Still, the squad has utilized help home and abroad to find players like Luke-Bryan and his brother who are eligible for Anguilla but playing abroad - something that is much more difficult than locating players who may be eligible for, say, Jamaica with its population of 2.75 million or even Saint Lucia with a population nearing 200,000.
Just 15,000 people live in Anguilla, meaning its diaspora is far smaller as well.
On the island, many of those 15,000 people had lost faith they’d ever see their national team win a game. That often led to mocking remarks to players or good-natured barbs from friends that still stung.
“We don’t get enough respect here as footballers,” Hughes said. “Obviously, we’ve been losing in the past. Everybody feels like we go overseas, we’re going to lose.”
The 27-year-old Hughes, who is currently playing through a PCL tear to represent his country, something he admitted to me is “a big risk,” is one of the veteran hands on an overwhelmingly young team. More than half the roster called by manager Keith Jeffrey for the September window is 23 or younger.
His vice captain Alexander Fleming-Franco is just 19 and has aspirations of earning a scholarship to a university in the U.S. or UK or even elsewhere in the Caribbean.
He says his hope is to represent Anguilla well abroad but also to learn skills he can take back to the island and transmit to even younger players there.
“All of us young players have in mind that we want to change the culture, change the history so no one can look over us and say, ‘This is a small team’ or ‘They lost so bad against this country.’” Fleming-Franco says. “We as young players want to make history happen in front of the world.”
Fleming-Franco says the celebrations on view after the TCI game mostly summed it up. “We didn’t party too hard since we still had another achievement we were looking to get in the Belize game,” he said.
The teams spirits were back up upon arriving home to Anguilla, with supporters joining together to welcome the team home. Hughes has his sights set on a different kind of triumphant arrival.
“Even on social media, a lot of people celebrated the win. Everyone was happy. There was a good bit of people at the airport coming to celebrate us,” he said. “But I also want us to qualify for League B. That’s my goal, that’s the team goal.
“If we can do that, I feel sure we’d get a motorcade in Anguilla if we could qualify to League B. That’s the push right now.”
The crazy thing? It feels possible.
Anguilla, this team that hadn’t won since 2010, currently occupies a promotion place. It’s the top ranked second-place team ahead of another match against TCI and a revenge spot against Belize - but this time in Belize.
Nations League games are designed to be against more similar competition than some of the national teams that put up lopsided scorelines on Anguilla in the past. Advancing in World Cup qualification meant a return to some of results of old. Anguilla fell to Suriname 4-0 and lost 8-0 to Puerto Rico away in a game that could’ve been worse.
Clearly, there’s plenty to keep improving, but there were positives to take from even those showings.
“Even though we got beat by Suriname, if you actually watch the game, we’re playing good football. It’s only a matter of time before we start progressing and doing bigger things,” Luke-Bryan said. “We’ve got to prove a point and show the next generation of footballers that although you’re from a small island, you can still go on and do well in life and do great things - even beyond football.”
A team on a mission, full of young players hoping to use the national team as a platform to give back to the island, Anguilla hopes to move from local joke and regional doormat to a team no longer seen as an easy victory. Already, they think their reputation is changing.
“I feel like a lot of teams are respecting us now because back then they’d give us 8 and now it’s like, ‘OK, it’s very difficult,’” Hughes said. “I believe even Belize was shocked to just score one goal. It’s a step in the right direction.”
More wins are coming. One day, they’ll even get used to celebrating them.
In those matches, TCI played a goalkeeper who was 21 - an old man compared to 14-year-old Samuel Harvey who started both September games including the one vs. Anguilla. I’m working to learn more about him, as well. He seems to be a promising basketball player as well as a goalkeeper?
As always, get in touch if you know more!