Tamy Michel grew up watching her father run a football club through prison, political upheaval and the endless uncertainties of life in Haiti.<\/p>\n
Solange Michel spent 18 years leading Baltimore SC, one of the country\u2019s most storied clubs. In the 1990s, he was jailed amid the turmoil that engulfed Haitian politics but the club survived. Later, Tamy Michel\u2019s aunt, Simone Devuleux, took over. The family have been stewards of Haitian football since 1974.<\/p>\n
Today, Michel represents players at the highest levels of the global game, from Ricardo Ad\u00e9, the defensive leader of the Ecuadorian powerhouse LDU Quito, to Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Wilson Isidor, coming off Premier League seasons, and Haiti\u2019s record goalscorer, Duckens Nazon.<\/p>\n
Duckens Nazon<\/a><\/p>\n For much of the world, Haiti\u2019s return to football\u2019s biggest stage after a 52-year absence, beginning at 2am on Sunday against Scotland at Boston Stadium, has been framed as an underdog story: a feelgood tale from a country more often associated with political turmoil, gang violence, natural disasters and humanitarian crises than elite sport. Michel sees something else entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople usually say we\u2019re not ready,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of people never expected Haiti to make it. When the odds were against them, they never stopped. People forget that football is played on the field. They look at statistics and rankings and assume Haiti can\u2019t compete. But at the end of the day, it\u2019s 11 against 11.\u201d The surprise, she suggests, says as much about outsiders\u2019 assumptions as it does about Haiti itself.<\/p>\n The team that have arrived<\/a> at the 2026 World Cup, remarkably having booked their place despite playing every qualifier away from home, bear little resemblance to the one many casual observers might imagine. Only 10 of Haiti\u2019s 26 players were born in the country. The squad includes Bellegarde, who plays for Wolves; Isidor, fresh from helping Sunderland to seventh in England\u2019s top flight; Nazon, whose career has spanned France, England, Turkey and Iran; and Ad\u00e9, who has established himself as one of South America\u2019s most respected defenders.<\/p>\n Yet Michel rejects the suggestion that Haiti have become some kind of diaspora side. \u201cI see a national team,\u201d she says. That distinction matters because, for all the different paths that brought them together, many of Haiti\u2019s players faced a similar decision. They could have built successful careers without pulling on a Haiti shirt.<\/p>\n Bellegarde\u2019s story illustrates the point. Born and raised in France, he came through one of the world\u2019s most productive football systems and won caps for France\u2019s youth national teams before establishing himself in the Premier League. When Haiti approached him about representing the national team, Michel says he weighed the decision carefully, speaking with his parents and those around him. His heart, she says, was already with Haiti. \u201cIt\u2019s home. It connects them to their parents and where their families come from.\u201d<\/p>\n The same sentiment echoes throughout the squad. Haiti may not have been where many of these players learned the game, but it remained the place they chose to represent.<\/p>\n Haiti\u2019s history contains a narrative entirely different from the prevailing international coverage. It became the world\u2019s first independent nation founded by formerly enslaved people after a successful revolt, a legacy that shapes how many Haitians understand themselves and their place in the world.<\/p>\n That tension resurfaced this year when Fifa required the national team to alter a World Cup<\/a> jersey that featured imagery from the Haitian revolution. Months earlier, Olympic officials had raised similar objections to the inclusion of the revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture on Haiti\u2019s Winter Games uniforms. The disputes served as a reminder that Haiti\u2019s story is larger and more complicated than the stereotypes often attached to it.<\/p>\n Ad\u00e9 understands that burden better than most. Unlike many of his teammates, the 36-year-old defender grew up in Haiti before building a career across the Americas. As one of the team\u2019s leaders, he has watched expectations settle on the squad\u2019s shoulders. Asked what responsibility comes with representing Haiti on the world stage, he does not talk about tactics or results. Instead he talks about the people watching back home. \u201cWhenever we win a game, people are always happy,\u201d Ad\u00e9 tells the Guardian. \u201cThey will be in the street and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Defender Ricardo Ad\u00e9 is part of the Haitian diaspora, playing for clubs across the Americas. Photograph: Icon Sportswire\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The World Cup offers a chance to present another image of Haiti. \u201cPeople see too much bad news,\u201d Ad\u00e9 says. \u201cI\u2019m not blaming them, but that\u2019s what they see. Once you step foot in the country, you\u2019re going to see other things.\u201d<\/p>\n Millions of viewers who know little about Haiti will encounter the country through this team in the coming weeks. For many of them, these matches may be their most sustained exposure to Haiti in years. \u201cNow soccer is the face of Haiti,\u201d Ad\u00e9 says. \u201cIt\u2019s the good thing about Haiti. Now people are talking about Haiti because of soccer and because of the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n The responsibility extends beyond winning matches. \u201cThe thing we are doing is showing Haiti in a different way,\u201d Ad\u00e9 says. \u201cShowing that we can have less, but we can do much.\u201d<\/p>\n Haiti have not played a home match since 2021, yet support has followed the national team wherever they have gone. Michel recalled last week\u2019s friendly against Peru in Miami that drew about 27,000 spectators. By her estimate, more than 20,000 were Haitian. With travel from Haiti prohibitively expensive for many and US visa restrictions limiting access for others, the diaspora has become the public face of Haitian support during the tournament. Scottish officials expect a similar dynamic in Foxborough, where the famed Tartan Army may find itself outnumbered by supporters whose connection to Haiti spans generations and continents.<\/p>\n Next week Les Grenadiers face the five-time champions Brazil in Philadelphia on Juneteenth [19 June]. Fans are expected to descend on the city from New York, Boston, Montreal, south Florida and beyond, turning the match into something larger than sport: a gathering of a nation spread across the world.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a time when teams looked at Haiti as an easy opponent,\u201d Michel says. \u201cBut you could see how hungry the players became. They always wanted to elevate Haiti and were proud to represent the country.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest change is that it\u2019s become more than football. It\u2019s family. The structure has improved too: travel, organization, conditions for players. The sport has evolved a lot. And now we\u2019re in the World Cup. That\u2019s proof of how much has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Some fans will remember Haiti\u2019s only previous World Cup appearance in 1974, when Emmanuel Sanon ended Dino Zoff\u2019s record streak of minutes without conceding a goal and briefly brought Italy, one of football\u2019s giants, to their knees<\/a>. Others may know the country\u2019s place in World Cup history through Joe Gaetjens, the Haiti-born dishwasher whose goal delivered the USA\u2019s famous upset of England in 1950<\/a>. Many, however, have never seen Haiti play on the sport\u2019s biggest stage. Some have never even set foot in the country they will spend the afternoon cheering for.<\/p>\n Yet for a few hours, geography will matter less than identity. Families that left Haiti decades ago, children raised thousands of miles from the island and recent arrivals who still call it home will find themselves united beneath the same flag, singing the same anthem and investing the same hopes in the same team. For decades, Haiti has often been introduced to the world by others. This month, its footballers will do the introducing themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cI want them to know a little bit about our story,\u201d Ad\u00e9 says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fighters for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tamy Michel grew up watching her father run a football club through prison, political upheaval and the endless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-733718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}