… hopes to restart Leonora discussion

MINISTER of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony, has come out in support of FIFA’s intervention, aimed at saving Guyana’s football.Earlier this week, FIFA held discussions with the Guyana Football Federation (GFF), removed the weakened executive headed by Christopher Matthias and will in a few days, name a Normalisation Committee to oversee affairs until September 2015.
‘I’m pleased that we have an intervention that would seek to normalise the administration of football and hopefully help us to transition through this problematic period and put a better local administration for football in place, so that we can start implementing programming, developmental facilities and things like that,” said Dr Anthony.
Dr Anthony in an interview last Thursday evening noted that local football has been underserved.
“Guyana can do far more in football and to the development of football and I know from the regional administration (CONCACAF), they’d allocated a lot more funds for developmental programmes in Guyana.’
He continued, “We’ve not been able to benefit from those developmental programmes primarily because we didn’t have our house in order and that has retarded the development of football.”
The minister is hopeful with this committee discussions can soon be restarted for the development of 10 acres of land at Leonora for footballing purposes.
‘That programme was stalled because of a lack of feedback from the GFF; so we hope that with the new normalisation process that will be put in place, at some point when they settle down we can resume those discussions.’
Dr Anthony is of the view that local football has been stagnated because of what he called ‘poor administration’ over the last couple years and believes that those involved in the sport, need to respect FIFA’s decision and work with everyone to develop the sport.
FIFA intervened because they said a ‘vacuum’ had been created in the sport. FIFA Head of Member Associations Premo Cavaro and COCACAF Director of Legal Affairs Marco Leal were the officials to hold discussions with the GFF and its administrative staff on Tuesday.
The Normalisation Committee, Mr Cavaro told the media, would comprise five persons, passionate about the sport, but not drawn from the current crop of administrators.

(Leeron Brumell)