Will we be able to impress Warner?

Dec 06, 2008 Sports

By Rawle Welch
FIFA Vice-President and President of CONCACAF Austin ‘Jack’ Warner has started his fact finding and listening mission as part of a 40-nation Member Association Tour (MAT) where he is scheduled to meet local football and government officials.

Though no word of confirmation has been forthcoming from the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) as to whether Warner will be visiting Guyana, it would be reasonable to believe that he will, since Guyana forms part of the CONCACAF Region.

With the recent positive release that Guyana will now benefit from the FIFA’s GOAL Project which is designed to assist with the construction of facilities to aid the development of football.

On a recent visit to Costa Rica, Warner, who met with high ranking football and Government officials said he was extremely pleased with some of the facilities he had seen, ranking it among the best he had witnessed to date.

The FIFA Vice-President also commended the Government for releasing a 55-acre plot of land to the local Federation and also for playing the leading role in the construction of a US$87 million stadium.

According to Warner, it just shows the kind of relationship the local body and the Government have and their vision for the development of the sport in the country. He referred to the relationship as excellent and worthy of praise.

Well, the same cannot be said about the current relationship that exists between the Government and the GFF, which even though it does not appear to be stormy publicly, is far from excellent.

The current Executive of the GFF does not enjoy a good relationship with the present Administration and this might be the reason for the lack of systematic development within the sport.

Governments’ support for football in other regional territories has surely been superior to that of ours in every regard.

Even though the Caribbean is still struggling to get teams on a consistent basis to the World Cup finals, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, being the only ones to do so, no one can deny that the sport has improved leaps and bounds in terms of its image and popularity in the region which has now rivaled the one sport that has unified us for so long, cricket.

It has been a long time since positive remarks were made in relation to the state of football in Guyana and one could only hope that by the time Warner makes his stopover here he will be pleasantly surprised to see the level of improvement in the relationship that exists between the GFF and the Government.

It must be the primary aim of the two parties since improved relations could very well influence Warner into doing more for the sport in Guyana.

Guyana has a lot of talented players, some of whom are doing well in the T&T Pro League, but because of the absence of such a League coupled with the substandard facilities which is an impediment for proper development, they were forced to leave.

Football without doubt enjoys more crowd support when compared with many other sports in Guyana and even though there has been an upsurge in corporate sponsorship recently, working outside the ambit of the local Governing Body would only take the game so far.

All parties need to collaborate if the sport is to enjoy real progress and this should occur long before any impending visit by Warner.

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