THE various football associations have met the announcement of CONCACAF’s League of Nations with resounding approval.
CONCACAF President, Victor Montagliani, announced last Thursday, that the new competition will begin next September, and will be run as a three-tier promotion and relgation-based league.

“I believe it will serve the CONCACAF nations well. What is clear is that it will keep the countries active and this will be an opportunity to market your football product, and you could now seek to partner with sponsors in a formal competition,” said Jamaica Football Federation(JFF) president Michael Ricketts.

“It seems to me that these games will be played mainly during the FIFA window, but teams could always play friendlies outside of the window. But overall, this competition will serve us well and smaller nations will now be exposed to playing against bigger nations within CONCACAF,” he said.

There was also approval from smaller nations as well, like Grenada and the United States Virgin Islands.
“I think it is the right way to go,” said Grenada football boss, Cheney Joseph.
“The idea of the CONCACAF Nation’s Cup, in my opinion, is a positive step for the game, as it now allows smaller nations to dream big and to work towards those dreams,” he said.
The Grenada president, though, was keen to point out that the creation of the league should also come with the assistance of FIFA and CONCACAF in getting coaches and technical support for the smaller teams.

“I am also hoping that CONCACAF and FIFA will lend their resources to some of us to develop coaches and players in our region, and so hopefully the future of this tournament in another four years should be good,” he said.

US Virgin Islands Soccer Federation Hillaren Frederick agrees with the other football bosses, saying; “The new CONCACAF Nations League is pretty interesting and it’s something everyone is looking forward to. The thinking and feeling from FIFA is that they want to make sure that friendly matches are more meaningful, and they want to cut back on the number of friendlies.”

“CONCACAF has a feeling that all countries need to be playing more matches, so this new competition is going to help a lot of Caribbean countries — moreso the smaller countries like mine who don’t play a lot of international matches due to financing and stuff like that,” he said.