Former Reggae Boyz captain Warren Barrett firmly believes the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup will be won by one of the usual suspects.
According to Barrett, an outstanding goalkeeper who led the Reggae Boyz when they made their historic qualification as the first English-speaking Caribbean country to appear at the FIFA Men’s World Cup in France 1998, when the most coveted trophy in football is hoisted on Sunday, December 18, 2022, it will be by the captain of one of the “superpowers” in the game.
“In my opinion I don’t see any new team winning this World Cup, I think it will be one of the previous winners, we will just have to wait and see,” Barrett told Caribbean National Weekly.
Barrett, who was goalkeeper coach of the Reggae Boyz at the start of the failed 2022 World Cup campaign, has been a life-long Argentina supporter who is unwilling to throw his support behind any other team.
“As usual I have supported one team from 1982 and that is Argentina and that won’t change, I’m not a person who goes all over the place, I’m not a waggonist, whichever club or country I support that’s the club or country I will support,” he asserts.
He added that if there is a case where Argentina doesn’t qualify for the World Cup Finals “then I’ll watch the tournament but there’s not another team that I’ll say I’ll be cheering for outright, but there is a number of countries, the superpowers of the sport that we expect the winners to come from.”
During the 1998 World Cup Finals Barrett was the man between the goal frame in the games against Croatia and Argentina, with backup keeper Aaron Lawrence taking up duties in the third and final group stage game against Japan, a game Jamaica won 2-1, after being beaten 3-1 and 5-0 in the first two games.
Now, he says, he honestly doesn’t have the same level of eagerness and excitement when the tournament comes around, as probably 30 years ago.
Still, he wants to see great, attacking football and good technical ability and skill being on display.
Warren Barrett further argued that now that he’s a coach he views these tournaments through a coach’s eyes and not through a player’s lens.
“As a coach now you start to think as a coach would think; now you want to see the tactics that the coaches will employ in each game, the changes that they might make during the game or at half time or in the second half.
“If they will tweak their system, if they will go with a different formation, different shape, if they go in a high block, mid-block or low block, if they high press or if they play high intensity football, so these are things that I’m more interested in right now, but in saying that I still look forward to a World Cup with anticipation and I just hope that we will see an excellent tournament, probably the best one to date, good attacking football, some great goals and at the end of the day let’s hope the team that wins it will be the team that most deserves it.”
Having proudly led the Reggae Boyz onto the pitch for the first two games at the France World Cup final, Barrett understands the magnitude of what is feels like to represent one’s country at the biggest global showcase, and the pride and joy and honor that it brings.
