FS, without addressing the financial aspect of Boca's offer ... what were the structural elements they sought?
Basically, they want to extend their brand globally. Much like Arsenal, Chelsea etc in the UK, you pay a certain amount of money annually and get to use their brand. They give you support with training programmes etc. Also, they make their coaches available to fly over (at your cost, of course) and you can send players to Boca (again, at your cost).
So, basically, it's a marketing tool for Boca. I guess people may describe this as arrogance, but we believe that there is enough talent in T&T for clubs to
pay us to be their source of young players. By that, I mean a true partnership where a club would pay for a couple of youngsters to go on trial in the UK. Maybe the UK club would pay an annual fee to Central in order to ring fence any talent from T&T. Instead of paying £8 million for the next Kenwyne, they could have him for free, by investing, say, £50,000 per year.
I believe clubs in T&T drastically undersell themselves. They start to believe the negativity of the "fans" that downplay the standard of our league. I truly believe that most Pro League clubs can hold their own against English League 1 and 2 clubs and several SPL clubs. Many of our players are good enough for Europe if only there was a way in. We need to start testing ourselves against English League 1 and 2 clubs to check our progress.
One area we lack greatly is the development of talented kids into quality adults. 14,15 and 16 year olds don't need fitness or matches, they need specific positional coaching to hone their natural ability and add in positional, tactical, transitional, visual awareness, together with respect for the game, themselves and their team mates, staff and match officials.
Our players have to scramble to far away leagues to earn decent bucks because there is no system to open up a "trade route" to the European market.
We have to hold fast and not take the first deal offered to us. We were also close to a deal with Celtic, but if the deal is not right for us, then we'll step back until a club meets our terms. I believe by the start of the 2013/14 season Central F.C. will have several overseas partners, on our terms.
Again, this is not arrogance, but believe we know our value and we won't sell ourselves short.