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Alpha United for Caribbean Champions Cup
Draw set for New York on Thursday
Odinga Lumumba
By Franklin Wilson
Alpha ‘The Hammer United’ Football Club has been selected to represent Guyana at the Caribbean Champions Cup, the draw set for New York on Thursday.
The top local club enjoyed a fruitful 2008 which started with victory in the 2007/08 Kashif and Shanghai tournament. They won a close tussle for the Cellink Premier League on goal difference from Sunburst Camptown apart from winning the Mayor’s Cup, NAMILCO and Alpha Football Festivals. They were also Guyana’s representative at the Inaugural Guiana’s Cup Club Championship held in French Guiana.
Club President, Odinga Lumumba speaking with Kaieteur Sport yesterday said that his charges will try to do their best on debut at this level.
“We will try to do our best, we have to strengthen the team and we are currently having negotiations with a number of players. I am not at liberty to make any disclosures on who these players are and where they are from just yet, but will do so in good time.”
Lumumba also said that the cost factor will play a major part in the final selection of overseas players.
Alpha, had contracted Grenadian striker Kithson Bain for the 2008/09 Kashif and Shanghai competition but were not able to defend the title successfully after they were knocked out by eventual winners, Pele at the quarter-final stage.
The Caribbean Champions Cup is set to kick off in March but the draw will be held at the CONCACAF Office in New York on Thursday.
The draw will establish the knockout pairings for an event that will qualify three teams for next season’s CONCACAF Champions League. Initially, 12 teams will be paired for two-leg series in March with the six winners advancing to join the Puerto Rico Islanders and San Juan Jabloteh of Trinidad and Tobago.
The eight remaining teams will be drawn against one another in two-leg quarter-finals to be played in mid April, with the winners advancing to single-game semi-finals May 15 in Trinidad and Tobago.
The final and third-place game would follow two days later in Trinidad. Both finalists and the third-place winner will qualify for next season’s Champions League.
The first part of the Caribbean championship draw will have W. Connection of Trinidad, Jamaica’s Portmore United, Haitian clubs Tempete FC and Cavaly SA, Inter Moengo Tapoe of Suriname and Greenbay Hoppers of Antigua in one pool, and another consisting of SV Racing and SV Britannia of Aruba, Sevilla FC of Puerto Rico, CSD Barber of the Netherlands Antilles, Alpha United of Guyana and Centre Bath Estate of Dominica.
The teams in the first pool will be paired against a side from the other pool. The winners will advance and again be placed into two pools to be drawn against one another. A semi-final round draw will be conducted after the first two rounds are complete.
Meanwhile, the draws for the CONCACAF under-17 and under-20 championships will also take place in New York on Thursday.
The youth tournament draws will set the two four-team, first-round groups for the CONCACAF Under-17 Championship in Mexico and the Under-20 Championship in Trinidad & Tobago March 6-15. This will be the first time since 1996 that the finals of the youth championships have been played at a single venue.
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