“It’s a real struggle for the players to make a living for themselves and their families,” he added. “The rich people aren’t playing the game; it’s the poor ones. There’s no professional league in St. Vincent. They get nothing. They work from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., and then at 4:30, they can start doing their stuff.”

He called the chance to share the stage with the region’s biggest players and teams “a massive opportunity.”

“That’s why playing for the national team is so important: You go overseas, and someone might see you,” Huggins said. “Scouts come here very rarely, which is a shame, because there is a lot of talent in the smaller Caribbean countries.”

Comparing the infrastructure of these two soccer nations, however, is an illuminating exercise. No expense has been spared for Klinsmann and his support staff in the search for progress. In St. Vincent, the situation is strikingly different.

FIFA’s Goal program, which finances development projects — sometimes controversially — for member associations, approved a project to build a headquarters for the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation in 2013. The plans, though, were soon scrapped.

“Our main training pitch is the one where we play all our games, and that is a shared facility with a cricket team,” Huggins said. “Now that we are in the World Cup qualifying competition, they have allowed us more freedom. They are still playing on it at this time of year, though, so we don’t always have it totally to ourselves.”

He added: “They want to keep training, so we only use certain areas, to go down the sides and keep off the main part. We just need a facility where we can train whenever we like. We can’t keep sharing a surface which is used for other sports.”