A sponsored message popped up in Twitter timelines last week showing US football’s biggest female star holding a silver boot to mark the return of a fast food chain’s Monopoly game.

While Alex Morgan was using Twitter to promote the chance to win big cash prizes, the head coach of the nation that the US face in their opening World Cup qualifier on Wednesday night was issuing money-related tweets of a rather more desperate kind.

“I need HELP! T&T sent a team here last night with $500 total. No equipment such as balls, no transportation from airport to hotel, nothing,” Randy Waldrum wrote at 7am last Wednesday.

I need HELP! T&T sent a team here last night with $500 total. No equipment such as balls,no transportation from airport to hotel, nothing. — Randy Waldrum (@CoachWaldrum) October 8, 2014

“I don’t know how I’m going to feed these players starting at lunch today! If you know of anyone in Dallas area that will help with food, etc… Please let me know asap! And I’m suppose to qualify this team for a World Cup! I have to help these players somehow..they deserve better”.

Already in Dallas as he prepared for a training camp, Waldrum had spent the previous night agonising over his fundraising tactics. One of his Trinidad & Tobago players had called him at midnight to explain that the paltry expenses provided by their federation had run out.

About a dozen players were travelling from Port of Spain to Texas via Miami and had spent $300 on dinner during a stop in Miami’s airport. They had managed to negotiate with cab drivers at the airport in Dallas to persuade them to take the team to their suburban hotel for the remaining $200. The camp had already been delayed by a couple of days because of the time it took the federation to pay US visa fees. And following a hotel breakfast and training, they were going to get hungry.

The Twitter appeal quickly went viral, mobilising the Texas soccer community, which raised thousands of dollars. The Keeper Notes website said it collected $9,300 in eight hours. Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas provided training facilities at no cost and the Hunt family, which owns the club, offered to pay for meals.

A huge thank you to @FCDallas for going above & beyond for T&T WNT. Gave us facility, game proceeds, meals, etc. Front office is top class — Randy Waldrum (@CoachWaldrum) October 10, 2014

Local restaurants and families, expat Trinidadians and the American Outlaws supporters group stepped up to offer help such as water, Gatorade, protein bars and training kit.

Most remarkably, the rival Haiti team offered $1,300 of its own extremely limited funds - and then got a call from the Clinton Foundation offering long-term assistance, Haiti’s coach told the Associated Press. As of Monday night, Jen Cooper of Keeper Notes said that they had raised $13,773.02 via Paypal.

Waldrum’s scheme had worked, but his bosses back in Trinidad were not impressed. “It caused such an uproar, the federation got embarrassed by it, the government got embarrassed by it,” he told the Guardian. “That wasn’t my intention, to tweet it out and embarrass people and make them look bad. The fact is there was no money and I had just a couple of hours to figure out how I was going to get them fed.”

Last Friday, Waldrum wrote a letter to Raymond Tim Kee, the federation president, which was published on the organisation’s Facebook page. “The response was overwhelming however in hindsight, the language used to appeal for assistance could have been better and was not meant to cause any embarrassment to the TTFA nor the Trinidad and Tobago public at large. If it did by any chance, I apologize in advance for any embarrassment caused,” Waldrum wrote.

Trinidad and Tobago Newsday reported last Saturday that the squad was under a “social media ban” to stop them from making public references to the aid.

Waldrum said he was told last week that $40,000 in funds was on the way with the help of the sports ministry. “I am appreciative of the federation and the government for funding it. The bottom line is, the fact is, they left the country with nothing and by the time everything has arrived, we’re leaving for Kansas City,” said Waldrum.

Morgan’s involvement in the McDonald’s promotion underlines the popularity and marketing power of the leading US players – she has 1.5 million followers on Twitter, more people than live in Trinidad. But Waldrum’s Hail Mary use of social media served to illustrate the hand-to-mouth existence of many players and teams lower down the women’s football food chain, even in an oil-rich nation such as Trinidad.

Waldrum, a Texan who coaches the National Women’s Soccer League’s Houston Dash, is in charge of T&T on a voluntary basis. The team’s players are unpaid and many are college students in the US or come from modest backgrounds on the islands.

“You could see the worry in their faces and eyes, I think they were a little bit down but I tell you what, once the people started coming by on that first day and dropping gear and equipment, food, water, Gatorade all that stuff, you could really see them starting to get uplifted,” he said.

The Soca Princesses travelled to Kansas City on Monday for the match, their first of three group games in the Concacaf Women’s Championship. It takes place in four venues across the US from 15 to 26 October and determines qualification from the region for next year’s World Cup in Canada. Guatemala and Haiti are also in the group with the USA and T&T.

The other group includes Costa Rica, Martinique, Mexico and Jamaica. The top two teams in each group advance to a knockout phase and the best three nations advance directly to the finals, with the fourth facing a playoff against Ecuador.

The good news for T&T is that Concacaf cover their expenses from now until the end of the tournament. The bad is that the Americans have not lost at home since 6 November 2004. Still, in football as in Monopoly, luck can transform fortunes.

US v Trinidad & Tobago, Sporting Park, Kansas City. Kick-off: Wednesday 7.30pm CT. TV: Fox Sports 2