Where we going?

February 09, 2005
By Bukka Rennie

Today we will surely come to know where we stand in the world of football. I wish our national team the very best.

I have witnessed all their games to date and I am horrified at the low level of technical capability which is reflected in their lack of confidence and their inability to possess the ball for extensive periods of time, moreso to pass the ball efficiently.

What is someone doing on a national team preparing for World Cup games but cannot pass the ball?

The coach talks incessantly about "discipline" and one gets the impression his concept of discipline is limited to deportment, how players behave on and off the field, how they comport themselves, and not the creative discipline needed to maintain structure; shift quickly from mode of attack to mode of defence and back; how to play when off the ball, etc.

The point is that deportment is really a function of management and administration, while the coach is about instilling creative discipline while developing technical competence.

One thing we learnt from the experience of the Strike Squad in 1989 is that it is not only the national team that has to be made ready for World Cup, the nation as a whole has to be psychologically prepared. Everything and everyone has to gel.

Players, administrators, marketing agents, all and sundry must be efficient and competent in their areas of responsibility. All the pieces in the puzzle have to fit.

I admired how Korea as a nation handled their campaign in the last World Cup. We would do well to study their experience, there is much there for us to learn in terms of forecasting, planning, monitoring and measuring.

However, come what may, I will be there as usual to give my support, and I call on every citizen to do likewise. And to be patient, growth is never overnight, it takes time and intelligent functioning. Enough said.

This being Carnival time, it brings something else to mind. I remember saying the following in a column in June 2002 about the song the Koreans were singing:

"...How could we not recognise the chant of the supporters of the Korean national football team, 'O Korea,' as indeed authentic calypso, the native beat and pulse of our own nation of T&T? Something has to be viciously wrong with a nation that proves unable to recognise any manifestation of it's own manufacture!

"Where is T&T's sense of self? Quite over on the other side of the day/night, we are told by commentators that people everywhere, in the streets, in the marketplace and in the subways, are singing this melodic line 'O Korea, Korea' to build their patriotic frenzy and fire the zeal of their national team.

"But it's a melodic line from somewhere out of our own extensive national songbook, and we fail to recognise it, far more to lay claim to the power of it.

"So what's new with us and all our own cultural creations?"

Well, what do you know, I received on February 2 an e-mail from Chester Morong expressing the pleasure he experienced reading my fun pieces on Blakie and in-between he sprung the following on me:

"...By the way, you hit the nail on the head when you spotted soca in my 'anthem' O Korea, a lil thing I did for the World Cup. A Korean client of mine, Sook Kim, was able to wangle it at home..."

Now that made my day. I had only felt it in my bones back then in June 2002. I had no way of proving it. I now have the proof. Way to go, Chester! But in the mean, where are we going?

PT I | PT II | PT III