The National Team, Absolute Resilience!
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince · · 3 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
To Donnet Desilus, Tchacho Eleazar, Goebels Cadet, Ti Sauveur Valcourt, Johny Descollines, Jerry Tardieu, Rolls Lainé, Nono Jean Baptiste, Ti Edouard St Hilaire and of course Eddy Noesier and all the others whose names I couldn't mention!
Without infrastructure in the country, the Grenadiers qualify for the World Cup!
There are nights when a nation rises, even when bent by storms. Nights when, despite the dust, despite the fear, despite the chaos, a people finally look up to contemplate a light that belongs to them. Yesterday, the Grenadiers qualified Haiti for the World Cup and suddenly, in the broken night, an entire country breathed more deeply.
This is not just a sporting victory. It is a poem of resistance. A sentence written with tired legs but an intact heart.
A lesson given to a destiny that has been relentless for too long. For how can this feat be understood, if not as an act of faith? Haiti has no stadiums worthy of the name. No national technical center. No pitches to dream on, no changing rooms to believe in, no arenas to celebrate in. The country has only fragments of hope, dusty fields, bent goalposts, overly heavy balls, expatriate players who learn early that survival, in our country, precedes talent. And yet, it is they, these sons of risk and resourcefulness, who have given the country one of its greatest contemporary miracles. They played for those who can no longer play. They ran for those who no longer dare to go out. They scored for a people who are humiliated, forgotten, disfigured, but who refuse to die. Their victory is not a coincidence: it is a manifesto.
A cry that says: « We are still here. » In every dribble, there were the alleys of Port-au-Prince. Bel Air, Bas peu de Chose, Cité Soleil, Lalue, Petion Ville, Carrefour and so on.
In every tackle, there were the hills of the North. In every sprint, the breath of worried mothers. In every goal, a promise of the future.
The Grenadiers have paved the way: it's up to us now to build the field. Yves Lafortune
Hollywood, Miami
A lesson given to a destiny that has been relentless for too long. For how can this feat be understood, if not as an act of faith? Haiti has no stadiums worthy of the name. No national technical center. No pitches to dream on, no changing rooms to believe in, no arenas to celebrate in. The country has only fragments of hope, dusty fields, bent goalposts, overly heavy balls, expatriate players who learn early that survival, in our country, precedes talent. And yet, it is they, these sons of risk and resourcefulness, who have given the country one of its greatest contemporary miracles. They played for those who can no longer play. They ran for those who no longer dare to go out. They scored for a people who are humiliated, forgotten, disfigured, but who refuse to die. Their victory is not a coincidence: it is a manifesto.
A cry that says: « We are still here. » In every dribble, there were the alleys of Port-au-Prince. Bel Air, Bas peu de Chose, Cité Soleil, Lalue, Petion Ville, Carrefour and so on.
In every tackle, there were the hills of the North. In every sprint, the breath of worried mothers. In every goal, a promise of the future.
The Grenadiers have done what Haiti has been doing for two centuries: transforming lack into power, pain into energy, and fate into technical deviation. They have shown that our collective genius survives everything, even the collapse of the real country.
Tonight, the victory is double: there is the qualification, and there is this rare, fragile, but true national thrill, which reminds us that a people can still rise when their team scores.
And then there is this intimate whisper, this personal tremor: Tonight, I miss Haiti. The streets of Port-au-Prince haunt me, and I can't stop imagining how grand the celebration would have been. Champ de Mars overflowing, the honking, the ululations, the dancing crowds, the smiles lighting up even on the brink of disaster. Ah, what a night it would have been!
Haiti, my love! What if we started building together? What if we finally decided to offer our victories a country worthy of them?The Grenadiers have paved the way: it's up to us now to build the field. Yves Lafortune
Hollywood, Miami
