Review: The British, soccer and identity in the Caribbean: class, race and nation, 1908–1973

Roy McCree, Abingdon, UK, Routledge, 2025, pp. xv + 272, £116.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9781032259017

Published online: 13 Jan 2026

Roy McCree, sociologist at the University of West Indies, opens this book with a mention of the successful professional footballer Dwight Yorke, a ‘direct product’ of what McCree calls the Trinidad and Tobago ‘football tradition’ established over the period 1908 (when the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association – TTFA – was formed) to 1973 (when the highlight of this ‘tradition’ was the country’s national soccer team’s achievement of coming a valiant second in CONCACAF preliminaries for qualification for the following year’s World Cup Finals tournament). A quarter of a century later, after nine years at English Premier League club Aston Villa, Dwight Yorke starred as a Premier League striker for Manchester United; from 1998 to 2002, he won multiple titles as a prolific goal-scoring forward. We don’t get to meet Yorke again though, until p. 259 of the book, when he’s presented as a player ‘made in Trinidad and Tobago’, representative of the football tradition established in the country. It’s an interesting approach which in effect invites the reader to ask questions relating to the influences upon the emergence of players in the as yet rather neglected ‘tradition’ that established the game of soccer within the country. And that’s really what the book focuses upon in a narrative that draws upon a wide range of historical sources, alongside sociological theory and concepts, to show how the game was established at all levels, primarily for men, from the grassroots to the top levels of international football competition.

The task McCree sets himself is admirably ambitious, and he frames the study within conceptual and theoretical debate drawn from the sociology of sport, sport history, and elements of cultural studies/theory. Chapter 1 tackles concepts such as ludic diffusion, identity formation and nationalism, emphasising a concern with the evolution of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), and the transformational periods of pre- and post-colonial phases in the history of the islands. The importance of ‘cultural hegemony’ is emphasised, as is the idea of ‘identity figuration’. We see here the impact of influential theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Norbert Elias. Chapter 2 provides a contextual overview of the colonial influences upon the early history of the islands, from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, when political independence was gained from Britain in 1962. McCree recognises here that a ‘British heritage’, including ‘British sports and soccer’, was carried through into the phase of independence, fuelled by the English FA (Football Association), the British Council and, prominently, British oil companies. Chapter 3 offers a brief history of soccer in T&T that includes documentary evidence – press reports, for instance – on the late nineteenth century development of football, ‘under the association code’, leading to the formation in Trinidad, in 1908, of a ruling body and a league of six teams. British immigrants at the heart of this development included workers in industry, the military, the civil service, the clergy, plus the commercial and financial sectors. Developments in the succeeding decades are described, and McCree labels the period(s) up to the 1950s and the 1962 moment of independence as an advance of ‘infancy to maturity’. Backing this up are more than 200 references from significant newspapers of the time. McCree is to be congratulated on the empirical depth of his analysis.

Chapter 4 takes us into the territory of social stratification, concluding that ‘the game of soccer was introduced to and developed in a society whose system of social stratification was riddled with cleavages along the lines of social class, race, colour, ethnicity, nationality and geographical region, the product of colonial conquest’. Rich data back this summary, including accounts of Indian teams playing North-South matches, and an all-Indian XI beating a Chinese rival to claim the Garcia Cup, in December 1945. The evidence allows McCree to argue that a status quo was challenged by the facilitation of ‘multi-racialism, inclusion and integration’, thereby showing how the sport could itself ‘impact society’, as well as society impacting the game.

Chapters 5–7 examine in depth the most influential forces upon the overall growth of the game: the middle classes; schools and churches; and ‘British organisations’ – the FA, British Council and multinational corporations. The middle-classes supported a process of professionalisation, barely concerned with the British-based adherence to principles of amateurism; about ‘professional soccer opportunities’ for players, ‘the middle-class led TTFA never opposed their participation’ throughout both the colonial and post-colonial periods. Middle-class administrators also made little objection to the commercialisation of the sport, as in the emergence of gambling on outcomes of football matches in the format of the football pools. Educational institutions laid strong foundations for the emergent football culture, adapting elements of Britain’s public-school model of sport but emphasising too the importance of soccer as a means of serving ‘local nationalist ends’ rather than adhering to the colonial principle that the sport should ‘make the education system and society “more English in character”’. The three British Organizations considered in Chapter 7 are shown to have continued to exert influence on T&T football. Both pre-and post-independence, British coaches were attracted to the country to train teachers, run courses on treatment of players’ injuries, and facilitate competition at regional and national levels – ‘political functions’ these might have been, or forms of sport diplomacy fuelling ‘a sense of British imperial tutelage’. The British Council contributed to the game’s development in the late 1940s and beyond through a series of football films and lectures, their activities pitched not just to the urban centres of T&T but also to ‘country districts’. Oil companies were to get in on the developmental act. Overall, McCree concludes, the actions of such organisations ‘served to reflect and reproduce metropole-colony relations and, invariably, British hegemony at the time’.

Chapter 8 considers ‘media, soccer and identity formation’, focusing in detail upon the post-independence period of 1962–1973 during which the ‘new nation’ attempted to qualify for World Cup final tournaments, and ‘the stirring of nationalist sentiment’ became ‘more visibly expressed’, reshaping the identity of the soccer culture. The T&T team for the 1974 World Cup qualifiers, ‘for the first time in the local history of the game’ fielded ‘no white players’.

Looking to bring together the in-depth analysis and narrative of the preceding chapters, the conclusion reiterates, pretty much inevitably, the core themes of the analysis and discussion that run throughout the book. Here and there, new material is introduced and the conclusion could be somewhat sharper and a little pithier. Dwight Yorke reappears, though, symbolising the success of the TTFA’s contribution to the making and remaking of the new nation’s post-independence identity. And the author confidently reasserts that the football traditions of pre- and post-colonial Trinidad and Tobago, ‘became an integral part of the new “figuration of identities”’ that characterises the country. The depth of research, the bold methodologies, the conceptual analysis, and the convincing argument of Roy McCree ensure that this book is without doubt a major contribution to our understanding of the historical and sociological significance of football culture(s) in the Caribbean.