THE National Milling Company of Guyana (NAMILCO) has signed a five-year sponsorship agreement with the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) for the development of youth football here.
This signing was held at the NAMILCO office on Monday and was attended by Wayne Forde, president of the GFF, and Bert Sukhai, managing director of NAMILCO. This initiative will see the execution of the GFF-NAMILCO intra-association Thunderbolt Flour Power national Under-17 football league, scheduled for kick-off in May 2016.
This signing, however, is part of a broader approach adopted by the executive committee of the GFF to address the issue of lack of long-term sponsorship for programmes and will involve engaging the business community to broker deals. Hence, the objectives of this approach are as follows:
To enable each association to play consistent developmental football at these very critical U-13, U-15, U-17 & U-19 levels and to bring stability to the sponsorship environment by removing unhealthy competition among businesses within the developmental football programmes
It also aims to ensure that tournaments overlap between executive term-limits so that football is not disrupted by political transition as well as to create a structured national scouting programme and an academy training format that will enable each association to develop the strongest possible association squad at every developmental level.
The deal will also ultimately produce national teams that are a true reflection of the nine associations.
Each association will organise an intra-association league within the scope of the rules and age limits set out by the GFF.
Coaches that have been trained to function as youth development officers will be deployed to each association to work along with the appointed association coach and together they will scout/select the best players.
These players will be entered into the academy training programme and will train together once a week under the guidance of the youth development officer and the association’s coach.
Each quarter the nine association teams will be brought together to play a two-day tournament during which a scouting panel, led by the national youth coach for that level and the youth development officers will identify the players for the national team.
These initiatives will position Guyana as a formidable football nation within the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and the wider football world.
“We are confident that in another four years Guyana will be exporting players to professional leagues throughout the world.”