Letter to the Sports Editor Is Administration harming Guyanese football?

May 02, 2014 Sports

Dear Editor,
Suspending local federations? Placing eight year bans on senior officials? A letter produced by the Vice President of the National football federation publicly asking for the resignation of its President? Guyana has become all too used to problems within the administration of the Guyanese Football Federation (GFF) over the last few years, but events of the past few months have reached the level of soap opera proportions. Progress and advancement of football in Guyana have been severely hindered, and in the case of the National team, sacrificed, all in the name of ‘politics’, a concept meant to benefit a nation, not prove to be a detrimental.
To place the situation into context, we need to head back to the 22 year reign of the GFF by Colin Klass, a man who in 2011 was one of a number of Caribbean officials banned by FIFA after he was found ‘’to have breached various articles of the FIFA Code of Ethics following an investigation related to the special meeting of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) held in Trinidad & Tobago on 10 and 11 May’’ and consequently Klass was banned from any footballing activity for 26 months.
During Klass’s reign as President of the GFF from 1989-2011 Guyana made little progress for a nation with such depth of footballing talent, the annual funding the GFF received from FIFA ($250,000) seemed to disappear and in return no facilities were developed or any indication given as to where the money was being spent, plans for a football stadium to be built never materialised, there was no transparency within the GFF and this stopped any real development being made in Guyanese football. To solely blame Klass for this however, would be naïve, there was a general council behind him signing off his decisions and often complaining about Klass’s leadership but never taking action, a lack of accountability that meant Klass was able to rule the GFF for twenty two years.
Once FIFA banned Klass in October 2011, Guyana coincidentally started achieving as a team, qualifying for the semi-finals of CONCACAF World Cup for the first time in its history only a month later. Franklin Wilson served as the interim President of the GFF during this period and in April 2013, elections were held to find a new permanent leader, an election which Christopher Mathias won against stiff competition from former players Aubrey ‘’Shanghai’’ Major and Ivan Persaud.
Matthias promised sweeping changes and the beginning of a new chapter for Guyana’s football, including reforming the National Squad (which hadn’t played a game for over 6 months by that point) and implementing the FIFA Goal project, which was designed to ensure footballing facilities in Guyana were developed, a project which the Klass administration failed to utilise despite receiving funding. Things appeared to look good for football in Guyana.
However, this optimism began to gradually fade as a period of quiet and inactivity dawned for the next few months: the National Team remained without any fixtures, no signs were given that successful manager Jamaal Shabazz or any member of his staff would be re-hired, and no indication was given that work on the FIFA Goal Project would commence, in September a FIFA Development Officer, Howard McIntosh, even expressed concern at this lack of progress. In 2012, the GFF (led by Franklin Wilson) had received a substantial payment (thought to be $1.2m US dollars) to swap venues for their final ‘’home’’ World Cup Qualifying game against Mexico, so instead of a final game in front of Guyanese fans, the match was held in Houston, Texas, as a means to attract Mexican fans to the game and make the tie even more financially profitable. This absurd deal (Guyana is the only country I know of to have sacrificed a home international game for money) was made by the GFF Council and yet it was never declared what the money would be spent on, or where it has been invested. Instead, Guyana’s football has not benefitted from the deal, the players featuring in the game received little notice in regards to the venue change, and despite being a decision made by the previous administration, Matthias has not updated the public on where the money went, or even set up a finance division in the GFF to clarify what is happening to incoming and outgoing funds, the current level of debt the GFF faces is also a mythical number which has not been made public. (To be continued)
Santokie Nagulendran

Editor’s note: Because of its length, we will carry this missive in two parts.

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Letter to the Sports Editor Is Administration harming Guyanese football?

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