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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Carlos’ wise words to his countrymen

by

SHAUN FUENTES
814 days ago
20230430

There is an old say­ing which we used to re­peat as chil­dren. It goes some­thing like this: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can nev­er hurt me.”

In my es­ti­ma­tion, there is very lit­tle truth in that say­ing. The fact is that the wounds caused by sticks and stones heal, but the wounds caused by cru­el or thought­less words may run deep and last a life­time. On the oth­er hand, words which are wise­ly spo­ken can be a source of life, com­fort, and heal­ing.

I am us­ing this in the con­text of a con­ver­sa­tion I had with one of this coun­try’s very small cadre of pro­fes­sion­al sports­men to have played foot­ball at the high­est form both at the club and coun­try lev­el. A small-town boy from Pat­na, Diego Mar­tin went on to play in the Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship and ap­peared in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s three World Cup match­es at the 2006 Fi­nals in Ger­many. His name is Car­los Ed­wards.

Car­los is part of an elite bunch, not on­ly in T&T but al­so in the re­gion. I’ve al­ways strong­ly be­lieved that men such as him are in­valu­able and per­haps scarce and as such must nev­er be left un­tapped, not for long any­way. We’ve pro­duced a lot of top per­form­ers in this coun­try in dif­fer­ent fields, some great, some ad­mirable and those who have made it to lev­els that we don’t of­ten see.

So when Car­los speaks, I would sug­gest we should lis­ten or at least try to take some­thing from it. He sug­gest­ed some things dur­ing the in­ter­view which in­di­cat­ed that he felt there was a need for stronger lead­er­ship in our na­tion­al team among the play­ing per­son­nel. The fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts of what he said.

“I re­mem­ber when I just came in­to the set-up with Bertille and I had the likes of Dwari­ka, Nakhid, the de­ceased Mick­ey Trot­man and oth­er play­ers that had me think­ing wow. I don’t think the play­ers now look up to the se­nior boys as good role mod­els. I was in awe of these se­nior guys when I came in­to the na­tion­al team. An­gus can on­ly do so much but it’s up to the se­nior play­ers when their young ones come in to say ‘Aye this is how we do things now.’ That is what I think is lack­ing, a bit of lead­er­ship. Every­body is a bit too com­fort­able when they come in­to the na­tion­al team as com­pared to when I came in­to the na­tion­al team be­cause I had it hard back then.

“I had to wait my time and I think some of the boys now come in­to the na­tion­al team think­ing yea I’ve made it. Okay yes, you’ve been se­lect­ed now what are you go­ing to do about it?

“It doesn’t have to be a big change but just lit­tle tweaks and even­tu­al­ly things will get right. We need to be mind­ful and re­spon­si­ble for every lit­tle thing. It’s easy to blame that and blame this one but every­one needs to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what they are do­ing and try to make things bet­ter for the next time.”

He men­tioned that the re­cent string of per­for­mances was en­cour­ag­ing, es­pe­cial­ly the match­es away to Ja­maica which in­clud­ed a 1-0 win.

“It is a step in the right di­rec­tion and you can on­ly get bet­ter. Every de­ci­sion you make you have to live by it. Every game you play, af­ter the game you have to say okay what could I have done bet­ter for the next game? You al­ways want to try to do things a bit bet­ter every time you step on­to the train­ing pitch or you step in­to the game sit­u­a­tion.

“No one de­lib­er­ate­ly goes out and plays hor­ri­bly. There are days when things just don’t go right but at the same time, these guys have an op­por­tu­ni­ty where they can write them­selves in­to his­to­ry. A lot of guys play the oc­ca­sion and not the game and I think that’s where they lose it,” Car­los said.

De­pend­ing on how you chose to view his opin­ion, some may take it in good stride and oth­ers may say he’s be­ing over­ly crit­i­cal. I re­ceived some feed­back with vary­ing views but one would hope there is a lev­el of ma­tu­ri­ty by those con­cerned to take it from a per­spec­tive where it brings some form of ben­e­fit to the over­all ef­fort and cause.

“There is one who speaks rash­ly like the thrusts of a sword, But the tongue of the wise brings heal­ing.” (Proverbs 12:18)

These Proverbs re­mind us of the pow­er of the spo­ken word to do good or evil to oth­ers. Oth­er Proverbs teach us that the words we speak have a great ef­fect on the speak­er as well as the hear­er. Words wise­ly spo­ken bring bless­ing to the speak­er while words that are fool­ish­ly spo­ken bring dif­fi­cul­ty and dis­as­ter. This is the sort of dic­tion for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er Mar­vin An­drews and mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald would bring to the ta­ble dur­ing their days in the na­tion­al team. Tim­ing is every­thing. It all fell in­to place at the right time in 2006.

Who’s to say it can’t hap­pen again for our coun­try?

Ed­i­tor’s Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com


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