Even be­fore last Sun­day’s in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly, T&T-born Dr Mario John, an Or­lan­do-based or­thopaedic sur­geon looked me in the eye and asked, “Man, how have you dealt with this for 20 years?” I looked at him and smiled. I didn’t say much.

This was the first day of the six-day camp at the Om­ni Cham­pi­ons­gate, Or­lan­do and we had more im­por­tant things to fo­cus on in re­la­tion to the up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly with the Unit­ed States.

We were bare­ly 24 hours in­to our stay and Mario, the FA's chief med­ical of­fi­cer for the tour, had al­ready been through much from deal­ing with play­ers, com­mu­ni­cat­ing by the hour with US Soc­cer to en­sure our team was com­pli­ant with all the re­quire­ments, en­sur­ing our team was re­ceiv­ing every­thing that had been re­quest­ed, ba­si­cal­ly be­ing part of a sys­tem to en­sure all mea­sures were in place for a na­tion­al team in the build-up to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball.

Now, re­mem­ber our team was head­ing in­to its first match in over a year and we were wel­com­ing close to a hand­ful of play­ers who were en­ter­ing our camp for the first time. So you could imag­ine the chal­lenges were not as few as one would like.

I would give my an­swer to Mario’s ear­li­er ques­tion on the night of the 7-0 loss at Ex­plo­ria Sta­di­um.

“You learn not to over­ly de­spair af­ter suf­fer­ing a de­feat, as heavy as it is, re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances. You re­flect, learn from what went wrong, move for­ward and fo­cus on help­ing ex­e­cute a plan to suc­ceed in­to ac­tion. You stand ground.”

I might have sound­ed con­fi­dent and less emo­tion­al but truth be told, I on­ly got a hang of this maybe 10 to 12 years in­to my tenure with the na­tion­al team. I had ba­si­cal­ly seen it all by then, from fal­ter­ing in the 2002 World Cup qual­i­fiers to miss­ing out on Gold Cup qual­i­fy­ing af­ter fail­ing at Caribbean Cup lev­el, to los­ing 5-1 away to Guatemala pre­ced­ing the heights of beat­ing Bahrain and then hold­ing Swe­den 0-0 in Ger­many, then plum­met­ing again, los­ing a World Cup qual­i­fi­er at home to Bermu­da, fail­ing to qual­i­fy for a Gold Cup un­til 2013. The list goes on.

I’ve learnt over the years that there are times when it’s not yet right to press the pan­ic but­ton but in­stead fo­cus on the way for­ward. For me, the key to deal­ing with such out­comes lies in the process of ef­fec­tive­ly re­view­ing and giv­ing feed­back back on the per­for­mance. On­ly then can you for­mu­late the po­ten­tial so­lu­tions.

For this par­tic­u­lar game, I think be­cause of the T&T ver­sus USA his­to­ry and the fact that it was our first in­ter­na­tion­al game in so long, the sup­port­er ex­pec­ta­tion pri­or to the game had been whipped to fever pitch. And yet, for all the hype and lit­tle prepa­ra­tion, we were clear­ly beat­en by a bet­ter side. And the back­lash has been mas­sive.

I can­not re­call there even me half the con­cerns and dis­may ex­pressed when we lost 6-0 to the US in the 2019 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup where re­al­ly you would ex­pect the dis­ap­point­ment to be greater due to the pres­tige and im­por­tance of such a com­pe­ti­tion. It seemed hard­ly any­one cared back in 2019. But this time has proven to be dif­fer­ent.

There were over 300 T&T fans at the match. They whipped up a tail­gate af­fair and we would hear the sounds of the rhythm sec­tion as the bus drove in­to the sta­di­um. It was a wel­comed sight and sound for us. But it didn't end there. We were down 4-0 at half time and as Mario and I ap­proached the tun­nel lead­ing to the lock­er room at half time, we were greet­ed by this man clad in T&T colours belt­ing out the ex­ple­tives in lo­cal palance from the stand right above.

"All ya wast­ing time," he re­peat­ed maybe four times in ten sec­onds as oth­er play­ers al­so walked by. It may have been harsh but it demon­strat­ed pain and pas­sion by a T&T na­tion­al, he want­ed bet­ter and we had dis­ap­point­ed him.

I kept my face straight and con­tin­ued walk­ing as up­right as pos­si­ble. Af­ter all, I had bags of urine thrown at me and oth­er mem­bers of the staff fol­low­ing the 2-1 win over Guatemala in 2016 in one of many colour­ful episodes.

Though the score was a re­al­i­ty check, it is a re­al­i­ty check that needs to be put in­to per­spec­tive.

For any coach or team go­ing through such an ide­al, it is im­por­tant that the par­ties in­volved be in a po­si­tion to de­liv­er al­most every­thing ef­fec­tive­ly from plan­ning to prepa­ra­tion and ex­e­cu­tion, in vic­to­ry and de­feat. “Know thy­self”, a Greek max­im says that un­der­stand­ing how you deal with things helps you ex­plain your ac­tions.

Over the years, I found a mech­a­nism for deal­ing with de­feat. It was a process that al­lowed me to get over the re­sult and move for­ward to a place where I could think clear­ly and there­fore as­sess the per­for­mance in a bal­anced, clear and ob­jec­tive man­ner. This has helped me with my du­ties and gen­er­al­ly how I man­age all me­dia re­la­tions at the na­tion­al team lev­el, al­so when I’ve worked at FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF events and even with my fam­i­ly busi­ness.

No mat­ter what strate­gies you put in place, how com­mit­ted you are, or how much ef­fort you put in­to some­thing, some­times you will face a sit­u­a­tion where the dif­fer­ences be­tween you and the com­pe­ti­tion are such that the out­come be­comes in­evitable. You can on­ly push on de­spite the cir­cum­stances or odds there may be against you.

In sport, there will al­ways be vic­to­ries and de­feats, the highs and the lows. You have to recog­nise that in every sce­nario and every sit­u­a­tion there are key ex­pe­ri­ences that you can learn from and draw on in the years to come.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer 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