Crabs in a barrel
By: Fazeer Mohammed (Trinidad Express).
sound and fury: Jack Warner, special adviser to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation.
If the Doc could have opted to leave the jackasses to bray, I can't see why Jack won't do the same.
It would be very surprising if the supremo of local and regional football is in any way perturbed by the rising tide of criticism and condemnation of his stewardship of the national passion, especially in the aftermath of Trinidad and Tobago's failure to reach the semi-finals of the Digicel Caribbean Cup.
As a former schoolteacher in an era when we were all required to study one or two Shakespeare plays from cover to cover, Jack Warner must be only too familiar with Macbeth's assertion about "sound and fury signifying nothing", for this is essentially what all this ranting and raving is all about, whether it is coming out of the mouth of the clueless, emotive man in the street or the former player whose record of achievement suggests that his utterances will have more weight than mere expelled carbon dioxide.
Of course, there are one or two persons of substance whose comments are not influenced by the pursuit or preservation of position. Essentially, though, what passes for educated debate around here, especially when it comes to any matter related to football, can be boiled down to jockeying in the homestretch to ensure they can cover their backsides and keep feeding from the abundant trough of the beautiful game.
Everybody and his tantie knows that Francisco Maturana is a complete waste of time as head coach of the national squad because he is following the dictates of someone else, as his erratic selection policy, contradictory statements and bewildering tactics throughout the year testify.
By the way, if some career apologist insists that the Colombian is following the beat of his own drum, then the situation is actually worse, because no sane person in such a position of national sporting prominence can do what he has been doing of his own volition.
But, instead of saying it as it is, everyone in the business of football like they catch power and speaking in tongues. Instead of a clear and precise position on the issue, we have to read between the lines, extrapolate the real meaning from a supposedly hypothetical situation or deduce what is really being said by way of subtle inference.
If we were in the time of World War II, a lot of these people would have been able to find full-time employment with the Allied forces in message encryption to ensure that the Nazis didn't know what they were up to.
Ask someone who can really make a difference to lay the reality bare for the record, and the response goes something like this: "Man, I cyah really do that nah, 'cause I go lose mih wuk," or "I really want to say it like it is eh boss, but I moving up in the ranks right now and I doh want to jeopardise that."
So many claim to be so passionate about football, to be so hurt by what they see going on at national and lower levels, yet are at the same time so silent and so inactive whenever the time comes to say or do something really meaningful, simply because they have a little domain to protect.
Well, if anyone reading this fits into that category, they should just stay quiet in the future because they are part of the problem, not the solution. If anyone who has been noticeably silent for a long time is now willing to speak out because he or she is no longer beholden to football's power brokers, then they should also shut up because they are guilty of insincerity.
In a country where students protest for parking spaces and every torrential shower prompts media calls to the meteorological office to confirm whether or not a hurricane strike is imminent, we really have it too easy, even in these murderous and lawless times, to appreciate the value of sacrifice for the greater long-term good.
It's all about looking after number one, and once that numeral is secure and its backside properly covered, then and only then will someone venture to speak out "bravely" and "fearlessly".
You either want real change or you don't, because no meaningful, fundamental change in anything that holds value to a significant segment of the population takes place without consequences.
Our football history merely reinforces the notion that the one or two who are determined enough and sincere enough to try to engineer a revolution are doomed to fail, all because of the treachery of the have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too crowd.
Just ask the question of anyone who is making one set of noise and masquerading as a footballing Barack Obama preaching on the platform of change we can all believe in: Are you prepared for Trinidad and Tobago to be suspended by FIFA in pursuit of that supposed ideal, which means no international football for our talented young men and women?
If that query is followed by silence or a barely muttered "no", then you will be able to understand why Jack doesn't even have to waste a good steups in the direction of the people he may think doth protest too much, and can therefore maintain his focus instead on what are clearly expansive political ambitions.
Everyone's faith is tested at some time. Those few tests that have come the way of our self-proclaimed football faithful over the years have exposed them as gundyless crabs in a barrel.
