There is no point pre­tend­ing. De­feats and heavy blows are nev­er good for any foot­ball na­tion. They are nev­er good for a brand, a rep­u­ta­tion or the im­age you are try­ing to re­build.

And right now, Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball is in that ex­act phase.

It is a pe­ri­od where the game for us is try­ing to re­store trust, re­store be­lief and con­vince sup­port­ers that there is a gen­uine plan. It is al­so about con­vinc­ing the out­side world that you are se­ri­ous again.

In­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball is not played in a vac­u­um. Fed­er­a­tions, agen­cies, pro­mot­ers, clubs, part­ners. They as­sess whether it is worth invit­ing you or tak­ing up an in­vi­ta­tion you may ex­tend. They ne­go­ti­ate match fees, trav­el arrange­ments, ac­com­mo­da­tion and com­mer­cial terms based on what they think your val­ue is. They al­so de­cide, con­scious­ly or not, how much re­spect they give you. And aside from that, there are al­so the play­ers who are watch­ing.

So yes, los­ing games, es­pe­cial­ly heav­i­ly, car­ries con­se­quences. We un­der­stand that but there is an­oth­er side to the ar­gu­ment.

Why trav­el halfway across the world to play Rus­sia with­out a full-strength squad? Why take on an­oth­er dif­fi­cult as­sign­ment af­ter a bruis­ing night against South Ko­rea? Be­cause some­times the re­sult is on­ly one part of the ex­er­cise.

For head coach Derek King and his staff, these match­es are as much about eval­u­a­tion as they are about com­pe­ti­tion. They are op­por­tu­ni­ties to find out who can cope, who can adapt and who has the men­tal­i­ty to sur­vive at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Not every­one will al­ways agree with squad se­lec­tion and sched­ules.

A na­tion­al team coach does not sim­ply pick the best play­ers. He must iden­ti­fy the play­ers who can han­dle in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. That means deal­ing with things sup­port­ers rarely see. Long flights, dif­fer­ent cul­tures, new en­vi­ron­ments, com­plex visa pro­ce­dures, air­port de­lays, and sleep­ing pat­terns com­plete­ly turned up­side down.

The T&T squad left home on Thurs­day at 4.30 pm and ar­rived in Moscow some 25 hours lat­er via New York and Is­tan­bul. Mid­night ho­tel check-in. The sun ris­ing again be­fore 3.30 in the morn­ing. Bod­ies and minds try­ing to ad­just be­fore an­oth­er flight to Kalin­ingrad and then prepar­ing to face the Rus­sians.

Those ex­pe­ri­ences mat­ter. They are part of be­com­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al foot­baller.

I of­ten think back to the road lead­ing to Ger­many 2006. Peo­ple re­mem­ber the qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, the Bahrain play­off and the cel­e­bra­tions. They of­ten for­get the dif­fi­cult nights and days that helped shape that team.

In the build-up go­ing back to 2003, T&T lost 4-1 to Scot­land. There were de­feats against South Africa, Venezuela, Thai­land, North­ern Ire­land, Egypt and Mo­roc­co. There was an­oth­er 4-1 loss away to Guatemala. The squad trav­elled to Seoul to face South Ko­rea. Those re­sults did not ex­act­ly fill the coun­try with con­fi­dence.

But what they did was ex­pose play­ers and staff to the de­mands of in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. They learned how to trav­el to­geth­er, pre­pare to­geth­er and re­cov­er to­geth­er. They dis­cov­ered who could per­form away from home and who could deal with pres­sure.

By the mid­dle of 2005, Leo Been­hakker and his staff had as­sem­bled a group with the ca­pac­i­ty and re­silience to qual­i­fy for a FI­FA World Cup. That did not hap­pen by ac­ci­dent. It was built through ex­pe­ri­ences, some good and some very un­com­fort­able.

In fact, while we were in Utah, I found my­self speak­ing with two for­mer na­tion­al play­ers who were part of that 2006 jour­ney. I men­tioned to them that the en­tire South Ko­rea Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion set-up at the BYU South Field in Pro­vo re­mind­ed me so much of our own World Cup base camp at the Sportan­lage "In der Ahe" in Rot­ten­berg.

It was not nec­es­sar­i­ly the size of the venue, but the at­mos­phere around it. The train­ing fa­cil­i­ty. The ded­i­cat­ed me­dia hub for jour­nal­ists. The ar­eas set aside for sup­port­ers. The con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment where a team can pre­pare prop­er­ly for elite com­pe­ti­tion. It had that un­mis­tak­able feel­ing of a World Cup prepa­ra­tion base. We had those things in Ger­many.

For the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of T&T play­ers, and in­deed the staff, sim­ply be­ing ex­posed to en­vi­ron­ments like that can on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial. They be­gin to un­der­stand what elite in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball looks and feels like long be­fore they ac­tu­al­ly step on­to the field.

Among the cur­rent trav­el­ling par­ty, on­ly my­self, team man­ag­er Oba Gul­ston and new­ly-ap­point­ed as­sis­tant coach Den­sill Theobald re­main from that his­toric 2006 World Cup group. King and Hut­son Charles are well-trav­elled as ex-play­ers and mem­bers of pre­vi­ous staffs.

Per­haps that is why mo­ments like these res­onate a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly with us. We know what those ex­pe­ri­ences even­tu­al­ly led to.

This cur­rent T&T squad is not the fin­ished prod­uct. Sev­er­al es­tab­lished over­seas pro­fes­sion­als are ab­sent. Some have club com­mit­ments, oth­ers have been ex­cused. That opens the door for younger play­ers.

And if there is one pos­i­tive to come from dif­fi­cult trips like Utah and now Rus­sia, it is that these young men are be­ing ex­posed to foot­ball at a lev­el many have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore. They are learn­ing what it takes. They are dis­cov­er­ing whether they be­long or whether they need to turn and come again. They are test­ing them­selves against bet­ter op­po­si­tion, in un­fa­mil­iar sur­round­ings, thou­sands of miles from home.

Not all of them will make it. Some will dis­cov­er the lev­el is sim­ply too high. Oth­ers will re­turn stronger, more con­fi­dent and bet­ter equipped for the next chal­lenge. That is the hid­den val­ue of these tours.

Foot­ball sup­port­ers are en­ti­tled to judge re­sults. Re­sults mat­ter and they al­ways will. But de­vel­op­ment is not al­ways vis­i­ble on the fi­nal score­board. Some­times it is found in a play­er han­dling his first 20-hour jour­ney. Some­times it is learn­ing to re­cov­er af­ter a dif­fi­cult night. Some­times it is un­der­stand­ing what it means to rep­re­sent your coun­try in places you nev­er imag­ined you would vis­it.

Years from now, if this gen­er­a­tion achieves some­thing mean­ing­ful, they may well look back at long nights in air­ports, de­layed flights, strange ho­tel rooms and dif­fi­cult match­es in Utah and Rus­sia as the mo­ments that helped pre­pare them.

The score­lines may even­tu­al­ly fade but the lessons rarely do.