Shortly before the start of the match between Haiti and Nicaragua, the Haitian locker room becomes an airtight room. It is a fundamental match for his team’s return to the World Cup after more than fifty years, and everyone is aware of it. The Haitian number 9, Duckens Nazon, takes the floor and makes one of those emotional speeches, the ones that give you goosebumps: “There are people who have nothing in their pockets, who are counting on us. We can make them smile, make them cry with joy. Let’s at least give them this. They have nothing, guys”. The violence and political instability plaguing Haiti forces his team’s matches to be played primarily on Curazão, a small island located about 800 kilometers from Port-au-Prince. It is there, in the modest neutral Ergilio Hato stadium, that last Tuesday the Caribbean team managed to give a breath of encouragement to the harsh reality that Haitians live. Two goals that became the ticket to the 2026 World Cup.
Haiti is the territory where gangs have kidnapped the future of its 11.7 million inhabitants. In the last year alone, according to Unicef data, 15% of the country’s children, around 680,000, have been forcibly displaced internally. This is a figure that doubles compared to the previous year. But it’s also that raw data that will soon become obsolete due to waves of violence.
In the country, young people who dream of stepping on the grass of large stadiums have become accustomed to dirt fields. Which has led the private Haitian Football Federation to attract players from other countries, drawing on its roots. The team is powered by children from the Haitian diaspora which has grown in recent decades in step with the Caribbean nation’s successive crises. Only one of the players who started the match against Nicaragua was born in the country, the 23-year-old midfielder Carl Sainté, player of the American Phoenix Rising FC.
But all that violence provided respite on Tuesday evening. The streets of Port-au-Prince were full of cars and motorbikes. Haitians wore their country’s red-blue flags. The shield breathed calmly for a few moments. Finally a reason to celebrate amidst the chaos. The architect of that momentary joy is the French coach Sébastien Migné, who has led the team since March 2024. Migné has never set foot in Haiti. “It’s impossible because it’s too dangerous (…) I normally live in the countries where I work, but here I can’t. There are no longer international flights landing there,” he explained in an interview with France Football collected in recent days in various ways. There he said that, to monitor local players, federation officials provided him with data and he directed them remotely.
“We don’t have many fans, but we have the support of our people”
Absences from the field with Leo Messi’s Inter Miami and an injury that kept him off the field in September after the match against Honduras led to striker Fafa Picault, 34, not being included in Migné’s squad for the match against Nicaragua. But turn on the television on Tuesday evening. He is wearing the shirt he was injured in against Honduras and is thrilled by his teammates’ brace. When the referee blows the whistle to end the match, Picault explodes. He takes off his shirt, throws it in the air and celebrates the ranking with his friends. “It was very difficult because we played a lot of home games on a neutral pitch. We don’t have many fans (…) The pitches can be very difficult and you don’t feel at home. What we have always had is mutual support as a group and the support of our people in Haiti,” the striker said in a press conference last Wednesday. And he said: “It hasn’t been an easy road at all.”
The earthquake that devastated the country in January 2010 froze the development of football in the area. We had to wait until 2012 for the team to play again. And he did it at home, this time in Port-au-Prince, against the Virgin Islands. Just over a decade has passed since that meeting and the 26 current national teams play in clubs outside the country. Together, according to the Transfermarket portal, they have a market value of around 46.6 million dollars (40.4 million euros). A value similar to that of Barcelona’s British striker, Marcus Rashford. In the national team’s trophy cabinets there are two fundamental trophies, that of a Caribbean Cup in 2007 and a Concacaf Cup, won in 1973. It was precisely the latter that gave them a place in the 1974 World Cup in Germany, their first and only participation. Until now.
Haiti’s feat is just one of the milestones achieved by Concacaf this week. Curazão’s draw against Jamaica (0-0) remains in history, which allowed the local team to access a football World Cup for the first time, but also left Suriname and the Jamaican team waiting, which could still reach the tournament through the play-offs next March. The United States, Canada and Mexico have already obtained direct qualification as host countries.
After leaving the locker room, the players enter the playing field. It wasn’t long before Louicius scored the first goal with a left-footed shot in the 8th minute. Just before the end of the first half, Providence gave Haiti their second goal with a header. The referee blows the final whistle: Haiti, 2 -Nicaragua, 0. Leverton Pierre, midfielder, throws himself to the ground. Smile. The Haitian team has secured its place in the largest World Cup in history, which will bring the teams to set foot on the territory of the three North American countries. They have made the big step into a ranking in which other countries with more football successes such as Costa Rica, Honduras or Guatemala have been eliminated. Haiti thus opens the doors to a new historic challenge, that of trying to overcome the group stage in which it was stuck in the ’74 World Cup.
