T&T foot­baller Shel­don Bateau is set to end a 10-month ab­sence with the T&T men’s se­nior foot­ball team when the So­ca War­riors meet Guyana in two friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­als this week at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

The Bel­gium-based de­fend­er who has been capped 54 times with the T&T se­nior men’s team says that af­ter “a pos­i­tive dis­cus­sion” with head coach An­gus Eve he has agreed to play at least one of the two meet­ings be­tween the War­riors and Gold­en Jaguars on May 13 and 15, re­spec­tive­ly.

He aims to repo­si­tion him­self as a main­stay in Eve’s plans with FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion and CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League (CNL) cam­paigns on the hori­zon.

Back in T&T on hol­i­day from an­oth­er sea­son with SK Bev­eren in Bel­gium’s Chal­lenger Pro League, the sec­ond-high­est di­vi­sion in that coun­try’s pro­fes­sion­al league sys­tem, Bateau spoke ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day at his home in East Trinidad.

“It was al­ways a goal of mine and of my gen­er­a­tion, to get to a se­nior World Cup. We’ve been to two youth World Cups be­fore and the big­ger pic­ture is get­ting to the next World Cup and we can on­ly do that with the best play­ers be­ing avail­able,” he said.

“I think we still have enough qual­i­ty to get to that World Cup and with my lev­el of ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence I would love to be a part of it and help lead the team.”

He added that it was al­so hard to ig­nore that the 2026 World Cup to be host­ed in CON­CA­CAF by Mex­i­co, USA and Cana­da will al­so be ex­pand­ed to 48 teams from 32.

It means that with the three co-hosts al­ready guar­an­teed au­to­mat­ic spots at the show­piece event, this con­fed­er­a­tion will be af­ford­ed an­oth­er three spots from the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process and a pos­si­ble two more via the in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-off.

“It is ac­tu­al­ly one of the best chances that we would have and for me, I like to live my life with­out re­grets. At the end of the day, the coach would pick his squad and that’s up to him but I want to put my­self in­to a po­si­tion where I have no re­grets, I would have giv­en my all like al­ways for my coun­try, and at the end of the day I could live with that.”

Bateau, 33, has not fea­tured in na­tion­al colours since T&T’s em­bar­rass­ing ex­it from the 2023 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the USA last Ju­ly, which in­clud­ed be­ing ham­mered 6-0 by the hosts on Ju­ly 2 to mark the end of a for­get­table cam­paign. T&T had start­ed the com­pe­ti­tion on June 25 with an en­cour­ag­ing 3-0 win over St Kitts and Nevis but three days lat­er were blown away 4-1 by Ja­maica who at one point led 3-0 af­ter just 30 min­utes.

Al­though Bateau played every minute of each of the three match­es, T&T’s fi­nal group match against the USA was the last time he rep­re­sent­ed the se­nior team. Dur­ing that stretch of nine match­es out of the team T&T beat Cu­ra­cao 1-0 and lost 5-3 to the same op­po­nents and record­ed iden­ti­cal 3-2 wins against El Sal­vador and Guatemala in the CNL League A group stage. The per­for­mances were re­ward­ed with a quar­ter­fi­nal show­down in the com­pe­ti­tion against the USA where T&T was again beat­en 3-0 in the first leg in Austin Texas be­fore achiev­ing a stir­ring 2-1 win in front of a home crowd at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

Sub­se­quent­ly, how­ev­er, the War­riors would al­so come out on the wrong end of a 2-0 re­sult in CON­MEBOL’s Co­pa Amer­i­ca CON­CA­CAF Play-off against Cana­da for a spot in this sum­mer’s com­pe­ti­tion.

Fi­nal­ly will­ing to lift the lid on his ab­sence from the se­nior team pic­ture dur­ing the pe­ri­od Bateau said, “For me, it's all about giv­ing a hun­dred per­cent and af­ter speak­ing with the coach I felt like I wouldn’t be able to do that. I shared that with him and we had a mu­tu­al agree­ment more or less.”

He added, “There would have been oth­er per­son­al is­sues I would think on both ends prob­a­bly but, in the end, I would say there was a mu­tu­al agree­ment.

“It is no se­cret, when you play at a cer­tain lev­el some things as a pro­fes­sion­al you don’t agree with. Not on­ly my­self, oth­er play­ers would have shared their sen­ti­ments but for me, the main thing was just the men­tal fac­tor. Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the Gold Cup it was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult func­tion­ing un­der the cir­cum­stances at a high stan­dard.”

The failed 2023 Gold Cup cam­paign did not take its toll on Bateau alone. Months lat­er, team cap­tain Kevin Moli­no sud­den­ly peeled back the veil on the na­tion­al team and more so the man­age­ment of head coach An­gus Eve.

Days af­ter Eve named Moli­no in a pro­vi­sion­al 40-man squad for the Sep­tem­ber 2023 in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow for CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League match­es, the then Min­neso­ta Unit­ed play­mak­er launched a tirade as re­port­ed by Wired868.com.

“I don’t want to be a part of this mess,” Moli­no re­port­ed­ly told Wired868. “I don’t want to be part of a set-up where the na­tion­al coach is us­ing the na­tion­al team for his own ben­e­fit. I don’t want to be part of that. For me, he lost the lock­er room. One hun­dred per­cent, he lost the lock­er room.”

Speak­ing on Thurs­day, Bateau, a close friend of Moli­no dat­ing back to their time with sev­er­al youth na­tion­al and club teams, rub­bished any idea that his own time away from the na­tion­al team was a re­sult of be­ing black­list­ed.

“It def­i­nite­ly wasn’t con­nect­ed to the stance that Moli­no took. That was a per­son­al choice that he made. Of course, we spoke about it and there are things that I agreed with (that he said). It's no se­cret to any­body who would have been watch­ing T&T for the past few years.”

Dur­ing his time away, Bateau has thrived at the club lev­el. Ini­tial­ly signed to SK Bev­eren on loan from Turk­ish club Sam­sun­spor, Bateau penned a two-year per­ma­nent deal at the start of the just-con­clud­ed 2023-24 sea­son and was al­so named club cap­tain.

Fol­low­ing a sol­id 32 ap­pear­ances last sea­son, the for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege de­fend­er made 28 ap­pear­ances this sea­son, scor­ing three goals and pro­vid­ing one as­sist. This cou­pled with the fact that an­oth­er FI­FA World Cup cam­paign is about to be­gin, Bateau says is the ide­al time to re­sume his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

He said, “I feel quite good. To me, age is just a num­ber and to be hon­est with my ex­pe­ri­ence I think with all those fac­tors I can be an as­set to the na­tion­al team.”

Hope­ful for new en­er­gy from new ex­ec­u­tive

Bateau has been capped at Un­der-17, U-20, and U-23 lev­el for T&T and made his se­nior team de­but in 2013. Dur­ing his 10-year stint as a se­nior So­ca War­rior, he has played un­der five dif­fer­ent man­agers.

He has al­so seen his fair share of TTFA pres­i­dents come and go. In April’s TTFA elec­tion, Kieron Ed­wards came in­to the helm re­plac­ing the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee head­ed by Robert Hadad.

T&T al­so has con­tin­u­ous top-flight, com­pet­i­tive foot­ball be­ing played via the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League.

All en­cour­ag­ing signs for the coun­try's foot­balling fu­ture, said Bateau.

“Trinidad foot­ball has al­ways had po­ten­tial, it's just for us some­times to put ego aside and work to­geth­er at all lev­els.

“With the league be­ing down for a while, it's re­al­ly good to have a league up and run­ning, be­ing able to have ac­cess to it on­line is re­al­ly a good feel­ing to be able to see some of my peers, some of the youths be­cause I am al­so look­ing at younger play­ers to help them to get out­side as well, is re­al­ly pos­i­tive.

“I think we can work to­geth­er a bit more at all lev­els be­cause with these things go­ing on and with the new fed­er­a­tion tak­ing over hope­ful­ly things can con­tin­ue to go in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.”