Jack Warner launches biography
Walter Alibey (Trinidad Newsday)
THE SECOND biography of a man of many titles, Jack Warner, best known as a controversial FIFA vice-president, was launched at the Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain yesterday.
Written by Guardian sports editor Valentino Singh, the book outlines the varied life and times of Warner who grew up in Rio Claro to become one of the most powerful men in world football.
And yesterday Warner lauded in several speeches for the part he played in guiding the Soca Warriors to the World Cup Finals in Germany last month.
Currently a deputy leader of the United National Congress, the opposition political party, Warner said yesterday that the book was not meant to be a manual of how anyone else should proceed in their life, but to show how his life was, and how he did it.
Singh was once one of Warner’s biggest critics but has been won over in the initial biography, Into the Night.
And yesterday the second installment was launched at a function which was attended by President George Maxwell Richards, who wrote the foreword; Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, former president Sir Ellis Clarke, Football Federation president Oliver Camps and businesman Ameer Edoo. President Richards in delivering the feature speech said people with a low self esteem will find the book useful. Warner had been seriously considering suicide following the World Cup qualifying match between TT and the USA in November 1989 when needing a draw to play in Italia ‘90, the home team was beaten 1-0.
After the match Warner was embroiled in a controversy concerning the overcrowding of the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Mucrapo and a ticket scandal.
Warner noted that there are a lot of things that people do not know about him, including the time he “cried like a baby” after the 1989 match.
Warner said the more intense your passion for any dream, the deeper the wound, and therefore his wound had been deeper than any other at that time.
He said that part of what makes him what he is today is the insistence of dreaming again and again and doing it all to ensure that one day it will be a reality.
He said he decided to bare his soul in Zero to Hero with detailed experiences and other business pursuits, convinced that the social value derived from the widest possible distribution of such information far outweighs personal gains that may accrue from withholding it.
Kingman
