With the rehabilitation of his niggling knee injury an ongoing process, Western Tigers talisman Hubert ‘Bertie’ Pedro states that his objective once again is to fight his way into contention for the Golden Jaguars senior programme.
This he disclosed following a brief interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday. According to Pedro, “Once I overcome this injury and come back out for field football that is the aim. I want to make the national team, maybe for a two or three-year period before I decide to retire from the format. I need to play with the national team at a major event, I only had that one experience and after that I had an injury but once I recover that is the intention.”
The former Fruta Conquerors attacker has been capped once at the senior level. This occurred in 2018 against the Canada Olympic team. On his debut, which came via a substitute appearance, Pedro netted Guyana’s only goal in the 68th minute during their 5-1 loss to the visitors.
He is yet to make another appearance for the Golden Jaguars to date. Pedro, 31, stated that his recent drive to return to the national fold is based on the self-belief that he has the necessary quality to feature given the current composition of the squad.
He added, “After watching the [2019] CONCACAF Golf Cup and some of the players that featured, I know I have what it takes to play at that level. I am technically sound and I have played in major teams like Alpha United, Slingerz and Fruta Conquerors, teams that are structured and have a similar setup like the national team so it’s not different if you enter the national team. I am working right not to recover from my injury and return to field football.”
Asked for the possible reasons surrounding his prior non-selection to the national team, Pedro opined that he is unaware given his past performances at the highest levels which, he says, certainly warranted selection.
He added, “I don’t know why I don’t know if it was the team I was playing for or the selectors didn’t think I was good enough, but the numbers speak for themselves, I was one of the top scorers and better players for years at the national level and wasn’t called up. I went to Fruta Conquerors and then was called to the national team despite doing the same thing before with other teams which was scoring goals. I just didn’t think I did anything different.”
