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CCNTV6
  • 2 years ago


Here's a former footballer who is wishing he could lace up his boots to take part in the T&T Professional Football League. His name is Leroy De Leon and he is 75 years-old. He shares his story of having a tough decision to make during his playing days for the national team. It's a decision he regrets to this day.
Transcript
00:00 When you look back to how football was played then to how it is played now,
00:04 what do you think is the main difference?
00:05 To me, it's the passion for the game. I don't see it anymore for some reason.
00:13 When we played, we played because we loved the game. We loved it. I mean, you would not believe
00:20 football was it. There are so many distractions now and so much money to be made right now.
00:28 I don't, this is one of the reasons I don't understand why people are not putting their
00:34 whole being into trying to be the best they could be.
00:39 At 75 years old, Leroy de Leon wishes he could turn back the clock to 1973,
00:44 even as he urges the current crop of footballers to make the best of their time.
00:48 He said he made as much as $12,000 a year in his prime.
00:52 Well, I did not go to Haiti because we had a money issue with
00:59 Sri Lanka Bay football. They took me in a corner and they said they wanted to have a meeting with me.
01:06 I was kind of dumb in the sense that they put me in the middle and I got so much tap
01:17 because I didn't come to Haiti. They said if I came to Haiti in 1973,
01:24 I would have been, we would have been in Germany because the World Cup was in Germany in '74.
01:30 So they blamed me for the loss in Haiti, which I accepted after a while. And if I had to do it
01:39 again, I would play for the country first and then deal with the money issue later.
01:43 Did you get the money that was owed to you?
01:46 No, not yet. Maybe I may, you know a good lawyer.
01:49 So looking back, do you regret your decision? Well, I'm getting that you regret it somewhat.
01:58 I did regret not going to Haiti in '73. I did. I still do right now. Like I said,
02:07 I should have gone, played there and then deal with the money issue later on. But I didn't.
02:15 And it is what it is. He played against the likes of George Best, Pele, Bobby Moore and
02:20 Franz Beckenbauer, but he always believed in himself. I love the people I played with.
02:25 But I swear the people I love most are the people I played against because they took my game to a
02:33 different level. And that's, I'm serious about that. The people I played against, those are
02:40 the people that I should be thanking, not the people on my team. I enjoyed playing against them.
02:47 You know, when you get in the field, you butterfly all over you. Boy, this is Beckenbauer,
02:53 this is Pele, this is... I never felt that way. I always felt I was better than them.
02:59 And I'm not boasting, I'm just saying the way I felt. 90% of the time I was wrong, but what the heck.
03:08 Sergio Dufour, TV6 Sport.
03:09 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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