THE Concacaf Champions League witnessed one of the biggest upsets in its history on Tuesday night as Violette AC of Haiti knocked out Major League Soccer opposition, Austin FC.

Violette faced numerous organisational obstacles just to get these games played, including visa issues when travelling to the United States, for their team made up entirely of Haitians, and being unable to play their home leg in Port-au-Prince, where they are based in Haiti.

The sporting conditions weren’t too favourable either. On top of the large gap in perceived quality between themselves and Austin FC, Violette had not played a competitive game since May 2022 when they won the final of the 2022 Caribbean Club Championship against Dominican side Cibao.

The other prize for winning that final, which was played at their opponent's home ground, the Estadio Cibao in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, was qualification for this season’s Champions League.

It is to that stadium Violette returned to play their first-ever Champions League game, against Austin FC, and it was the venue for one of the most remarkable wins in the competition’s history as the Haitians triumphed 3-0 in their “home” leg.

A huge, sprawling tree behind one of the goals provided a magical, mystical backdrop for this extraordinary win, and the game showcased plenty of what makes the Concacaf Champions League so special and unique.

The tie has also highlighted several problems, not only with the confederation’s national leagues but also with the politics of the region that can place further obstacles in the way of Caribbean and Central American teams.

Violette’s lack of football was due to their domestic competition, the Ligue Haitienne, being abandoned at the cloture [closing] stage of the 2020/21 season. The team from Port-au-Prince won the ouverture [opening] stage playoffs, which led to their participation in the Caribbean Club Championship, and subsequent qualification for the Champions League.

They haven’t played a league game since May 2021, and domestic competitions in Haiti are still suspended due to ongoing turmoil in the country. 

This turmoil is the result of a perfect storm involving numerous factors including natural disasters, with devastating earthquakes hitting the country in 2010 and 2021; social unrest due to a shortage of fuel due to rising costs globally; resulting hunger and an outbreak of cholera; gang violence; and the assassination of president Jovenel Moise in July 2021 by a group foreign mercenaries consisting mostly of ex-Colombian military plus two American citizens.

As is often the case, the root cause of the problems goes back even further. In terms of US interference, it begins with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and has been developing ever since.

The US posed as a protector of the Americas but in reality, it wanted to control them, merely replacing the imperialism of the European colonial powers of the time. It became the type of imperialist meddler it once claimed to oppose.

The Monroe Doctrine emerged shortly after the Haitian Revolution — a slave revolt that led to the first independent black republic outside Africa and resulted in the new country of Haiti becoming one of the first in the West to abolish slavery entirely.

Since then there have been numerous instances of interference, and even occupation by the US, as a country that once sent shockwaves throughout a world of slave ownership and European rule has been gradually eroded into one of political and social strife.

It’s no surprise, then, that people in Haiti are naturally wary of further foreign intervention, as such incidents in the past have contributed to the current turmoil.

US-backed coups in 1991 and 2004 ousted the democratically elected then-Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Such incidents will be or will have become familiar to many countries in the Americas.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times in March 2004, American economist Jeffrey D Sachs commented: “Did the US in fact bankroll a coup in Haiti, a scenario that seems likely based on present evidence?

“Only someone ignorant of US history and of the administrations of George H W Bush and George W Bush would dismiss these questions.

“The United States has repeatedly sponsored coups and uprisings in Haiti and in neighbouring Caribbean countries.

“Ominously, before this week, the most recent such episode in Haiti came in 1991, during the first Bush administration, when thugs on the CIA payroll were among the leaders of paramilitary groups that toppled Aristide after his 1990 election.”

It is with the dual backdrop of trouble at home and the previous US interference leading to such strife that the issues faced by Violette need to be viewed.

This is why they had to play their home leg in the neighbouring Dominican Republic on the east side of the island of Hispaniola. Even if Violette’s own ground did meet the requirements for Concacaf competition, they wouldn’t have been able to play there anyway.

On top of this, there were visa problems that have become a familiar issue for some teams and players from Central America or the Caribbean when travelling to games in the US. This is regularly portrayed as a problem for the visiting team when it is really a US border problem.

A similar scenario occurred last season when Haitian team Cavaly were forced to withdraw from the competition after being unable to obtain visas to travel to the US to face New England Revolution.

The plight of football players being unable to travel to the US for a game is nothing compared to what Haitians have to go through as they seek refuge or deal with difficult living conditions back home, but football can often shed light on international political issues that wouldn’t otherwise be highlighted.
 
So often, the large, complex elephant in the room can be dismissed in one line, vaguely citing visa issues or gang violence in Haiti, but it warrants further context, even if just an introduction to the issues.

It is not something you’d expect to see in a match report or preview, but given time to reflect — something a two-legged tie provides — the plight of Haitian the team and their compatriots back home deserves further investigation and attention.

Even as they played the first leg, Violette were aware they could face problems a week later. The club’s technical director, Webens Princime, commented that at that time they only had visas for 12 of their party — players and staff — to travel to Austin for the second leg.

As it turned out, Violette were able to field a team. Despite the obstacles, they were able to name six players who started the first leg for the second-leg game in Austin but could only name three substitutes.

They defended with everything they had, facing wave after wave of Austin attacks. The MLS side played the game hastily, looking like they were trying to score all of the three goals they needed in one go rather than plotting to score one at a time. Violette held on to a 2-0 defeat on the night and a historic 3-2 win on aggregate.

Violette’s experience, and the fact it was exposed to a large audience through football, can help raise the profile of the troubles facing Haitians at this moment in time. 

Simply in terms of sporting competition, it seems ridiculous that a team cannot travel to another country to participate in a game in the region’s biggest continental club competition. 

The unsporting nature of such scenarios should serve to highlight the bigger problems outside of sport and the reasons for them.