Since the early 1980s, Haiti’s national soccer team has not had much to cheer about.

During the “Golden Age” of Haitian soccer, the team appeared in the World Cup in 1974 and followed with strong qualifying efforts in 1978 and 1982.

But since then, mired in internal financial and political disputes, the team has floundered and struggled to get to its feet. With the exception of a successful Caribbean Cup in 2007, the team has failed to add any championships to its name.

All that may soon change.

Victor Musa, a former Cuban international who came to the United States in the early 1990s, is a man with big ideas who hopes to turn the Haitian soccer program around and return it to international relevance. Through his contacts with Haitian refugees in the United States, he understands how important soccer is to Haitian daily life the way few other American soccer boosters can.  

For most of us in the U.S., soccer is just a game. It’s something fun to do on weekends. It’s a reason to get off the couch. It’s a way to add some color to the monotony of daily life. But in Haiti, soccer is life.

It’s always been this way. Even before January’s catastrophic earthquake, there was little to distract Haiti’s people from their daily struggle to survive in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. For generations, in a land where hunger is more common than hope, soccer has been one thing people can count on to never disappear. It is the one thing they know worth cheering for.

Now living in Miami, Mr. Musa works as a mentor to young Haitian soccer players who came to the United States during the American embargo in the 1990s. Some of the boys he works with had family members come with them from Haiti, but most of them had their parents and siblings stay behind.

Many of them, such as Eddy Millien of the Academy club Weston FC, depend on Mr. Musa to be their lifeline in the United States. He describes himself as a father figure to the boys, and he says they have given him a unique perspective on the role soccer plays in Haitian life.  

“The Haitian people are so used to suffering, soccer is all they’ve got,” he says. “They live in the minute, they live for today, because tomorrow may never come. Soccer is what keeps them going every day.”

Mr. Musa helps the players stay on track with their training and education. He brings them to practice and lends an ear when they want to voice a concern. But his grandest ambition is to help the boys use their talents to give back to their native country: to be part of a resurgent Haiti by forming the core of a new Haitian national soccer team.

He believes some of the boys he has taken under his wing have what it takes to initiate a new era of Haitian soccer and that, with the help of other talented young players, Haiti can be rebuilt, at least partially, through soccer.  

“Years ago, Haiti had the best team in the Caribbean,” Mr. Musa says. “But because of bad politics and poor organization, all of the talent in Haiti was wasted. Now, we want to fix Haiti through soccer. Soccer is in the Haitian blood; talent is everywhere. We want to harness that energy and take Haiti back to the World Cup.”

Mr. Musa says he has tried contacting Bill Clinton, the United Nations’ Special Envoy to Haiti, in the hope that Mr. Clinton can help further his cause to create a better-funded and more robust Haitian soccer team. And even though he has yet to get a response from the former President, Mr. Musa is optimistic that that he will be successful in his cause.

Haiti is a country in dire need of food, finances and many other things, but the first step to rebuilding after the earthquake must be to repair the national psyche. Sports have a healing power all their own. Victor Musa, with the help of players like Eddie Millien, will keep pressing to show the world that Haiti is still kicking and won’t go down without a fight.