PELTIER IN BETWEEN CARDIFF AND ARSENAL
“This by extension will be a great boost for football in Trinidad and Tobago. This is what the club is about. We have thought long and hard about football in this country and the benefits and we have decided to go the way of developing the younger players and trying to boost the country’s football,” Fenwick said.
what wrong with this picture
To me this statement stood out. Not sure if the best way to boost the country's football is to export all the best talent and that's it. It would appear that good footballers cannot be developed in TNT, and the PFL, of which Fenwick is a big time coach is totally secondary. I think when "they" were thinking long and hard it was more about the benefits to them and nothing else.
As I said in an earlier post, I suspect there is no such thing as a professional football league in TNT. Just a bunch of clubs companies trying to make money by selling players.
Maybe you didn't take notice that African countries are getting better and better. Do you think that has anything to do with players playing at a higher level? Do you notice a difference between the National team with and without the European players?
Bredren, European clubs are getting the benefits of well structured and highly organized youth programs and academies in Africa. Africa is producing superb individual talents all by their lonesome (is that hard for you to believe)?, and their youth teams are extremely competitive. European clubs are NOT developing Africa's youth.
There is a difference between local and foreign based players, yes, but these foreign based players started right in TNT, and their talents got them into European clubs.
Again, how can sending all our best players to European Clubs develop football locally?
If during the height of the cold war all the top engineers left the US and went to Russia?............yuh get my point?
The same will apply to any country and any discipline.
I disagree with you completely. The African countries are not doing the development work by themselves. The academies you speak of are for the most part run by, and/or funded by europeans. As soon as a player shows potential he is quickly shipped to europe. Some go to big clubs or smaller ones like Obi Mikel went to Denmark.
Football will develop locally when there is better coaching and the youths see it as a potential career. Football as a career really is new to Trinidad in the sense that very few players in our history have been able to forge a decent living off of football. Think about the many good players that have fallen to the wayside after SSFL or even College in the US. Our recent exposure may drive more of the youth to withstand the sacrifices necessary to succeed.
We really need organisation and professional coaching to improve local football.
The Academies that you speak about are only the ones that you know about because you have a eurocentric view. These are probably the ones funded by or afiliated with European Clubs. Pardnuh, African luminaries such as Okocha, and Roger Milla and even George Weah went through NONE of these European Academies. Totally homegrown talent. These players led the way and some European Clubs saw an opportunity to nurture some more talent and import it. Hence their own academies. For the European, and even the individual players, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and even I will say, having the Academies based locally is surely beneficial. However, it is highly doubtful that exporting the best talents will benefit local football. It is a typical brain drain. It has certainly benefited European football clubs though.
Think about it like this....if Latapy would have played locally, what would have been the impact on Trini football? Would stands not be full? Would youngsters not be trying to imitate Latapy (as they and even his peers used to do even while he was a teenager)? Would fuller stands not mean more funds and thus a career path in football is born? Would this not contribute even a little to a better football product from TNT? Having your best players "migrate" does hurt the local game, no question.
I agree with your last paragraph totally, except that the youths cannot just see it as a potential career, the career path has to be there locally, and this is where people involved in football in TNT are being shortsighted. For Fenwick to say that the way to develop local talent is to export the youth is amazingly illogical.
Where are our academies, either foreign or locally funded?
Actually, I really don't consider myself as having a Eurocentric view.
The fact is Latapy would not have developed into the great player that he is if he stayed in Trinidad. Do you think that Whitley or Hardest or Faustin fully realized their potential by staying in Trinidad?
Lets face it. Football in Trinidad doesn't pay enough yet. More importantly, the coaching and competition in Trinidad does not yet produce players of the highest quality. We have players with good potential but not more than that. Have you watched the PFL games? I'm sorry but the quality is not that good. Any player wanting to achieve their best has to go abroad right now. Being the big fish in a small pond is misleading. Ask W Connection with their fat average players who are considered amongst the best in the PFL.
Ideally, I would love to be self-sufficient but we a miles away from that. To advise any player to stay home when opportunity beckons abroad is foolhardy. When the powers that be organize themselves and the level of coaching and competition improves then we could consider that. When we could attract our own past greats back home then we will start getting somewhere. Right now, absolutely not.
With regard to Okocha et al. those guys are diamonds i.e. they were rare in that era. We had that too, Dwight Yorke. Think about it, Africa with the many millions of people had a few people that reached that level. For us with 1mil people to have someone on that level, i'd say we are ahead of the curve. All those players went to Europe as youngsters. Nowadays, the improved coaching and those academies are responsible for the glut of African players on the market.
I think you're putting the cart before the horse.
