TTFF holds successful retreat.
... aims to act on defficiencies.
By: Shaun Fuentes (TTFF Media).
The Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation held a successful retreat at Mayaro on Sunday December 2, 2007. The purpose of the retreat was to review the technical structure of the Federation with a view of obtaining optimum results in all aspects.
The retreat was attended by all the members of the Federation's Executive as well as the Technical Director, Lincoln Phillips, the Youth Development Officer and Assistant National Coach, Anton Corneal, the Federation's Technical Adviser, Keith Look Loy, the Women's Head Coach, Jamaal Shabazz and the Federation's Special Adviser, FIFA Vice President, Jack Warner.
The technical performance of the Federation over the last three years was reviewed and, notwithstanding the fact that Trinidad & Tobago did qualify for the 2006 World Cup, the meeting found that there were several areas of deficiency which impacted overall on the negative performance of the national teams. Some of the areas which were mentioned are Lack of an effective functioning Technical Department; No organised system of Coaching Education; Lack of Player Development; Lack of Accountability by the various coaches; Decline in the Centres of Excellence by the Regional Associations; Decline in Club Development; Inadequate attention being paid to Youth and Women Development and an overall decline in Refereeing Development and Refereeing Performance.
After much discussion, the meeting appointed Keith Look Loy to analyse the Technical Plan that had been submitted by the Technical Director to see in what areas the Plan had addressed the concerns raised and to come up with solutions in both the short term and the long term.
Krishna Kuarsingh, the former President of the T&T Football Referees Association and a member of the TTFF Executive Committee was also appointed to review the present decline in refereeing development and to propose solutions for the implementation of immediate corrective measures.
Both Look Loy and Kuarsingh were given 14 days in which to report back to the Federation.
Following this meeting, the Executive then met alone and approved the following measures:
1. 2008 shall be declared the Centennial Year of the Federation which Federation was first formed in August 1908.
2. A Centennial Committee headed by Kenny de Silva (with other persons to be named shortly ) was appointed to plan and organise the entire year's programme. Peter O'Connor has been appointed Chief Executive Officer and Felix Baldy Hernandez has been appointed Chief Operations Officer.
The plans for 2008 will include all football events, matches and other activities, a special match against a world class nation and a special centennial dinner for which the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter has already agreed to attend together with Franz Beckenbauer, Michel Platini and others.
The centennial match on February 6 against Guadeloupe has been scheduled for the Queen’s Park Oval and the Football Federation again wishes to reiterate that all players shall be eligible for selection.
3. A new Manager has been appointed for the 2010 World Cup team. He is David Muhammad Belgrave, a school teacher and part time radio announcer. He is to take up the position full time from January 7, 2008.
On completion of the meetings, President Oliver Camps thanked the members for their various inputs and stated that “from today a new era has dawned for Trinidad & Tobago's football and it is my sincere hope that together, as one nation, one people, we can use football as a vehicle for positive and continuing change in our society. I can assure that we had an indepth review of what took place in the past. We discussed what we should do to take corrective measures."
