March 28, 2024, 10:49:55 PM

Author Topic: Focus on the game  (Read 1162 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Kingk

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 671
  • Warriors 4ever
    • View Profile
Focus on the game
« on: October 30, 2005, 01:00:23 AM »
trinidadexpress.com


Not for the first time Trinidad and Tobago is within sight of one of the coveted places in Fifa's World Cup Finals. Not for the first time the country risks reacting to the mind games that are increasingly a part of the mental battle that is international competition. If in 1989 the wound was somewhat self-inflicted, with much of the country taking our advance for granted before the fact, this time around we seem to have been unduly affected by the Bahrain media feed, as they must have been by the football authorities in their country.

Surprisingly, because given his experience he should know better, national anxiety has been fuelled by football's enduring local impresario, Mr Jack Warner. It was Mr Warner, after all, who broke the news that one of the former assistant coaches, David Nakhid, had allegedly sold out Trinidad and Tobago by accepting a job to work with Bahrain's senior national team. It was Mr Warner, as well, who told us that Jamaica had agreed to host Bahrain for a week-long training session after Guatemala had refused, citing Concacaf solidarity.

As it turned out, neither was a done deal, and while we can understand Mr Warner's anxiety on both points, given his passion to crown an intensely colourful career in local football by taking Trinidad and Tobago to the World Cup Finals, we wish to urge not only Mr Warner and the team but the whole country to adopt a studied distance from these equally studied Bahraini exposes acting, again as is the way in international sports, as a member of their own national team.

Indeed, star midfielder Russell Latapy got it right when, in the aftermath of these revelations, he called upon his compatriots to ignore the "psychological warfare" surrounding the upcoming play-off with Bahrain and "just let the football on the pitch do the talking" for the T&T Warriors.

"We cannot," he added, "get sidetracked by what the others are doing. Trinidad and Tobago getting to the World Cup has nothing to do with Bahrain, Jamaica or David. We must do our homework on them as they will be doing on us. As a nation, we must keep supporting and doing the things that have got us to this stage."

In other words, we have to focus on both the home and away games that stand as the final hurdles before us and not on the mind games designed to distract us.

 

1]; } ?>