By Rawle Toney

THE Guyana Football Federation (GFF) on Thursday evening, via press release, announced that they will not be participating in the July 17-21 CONCACAF Men’s Olympic Qualifiers in Jamaica. But that news didn’t sit well the country’s ‘ballers’ who were in full preparation mode to represent the ‘592’ in Tokyo, Japan in 2020.

The federation’s president Wayne Forde said, “The GFF has taken a decision to direct its resources to the preparation of our players for the CONCACAF Nations League, which kicks off in September.”

While the move is understandable, many are unhappy with the GFF’s untimely declaration of their intention, especially taking into consideration that since Guyana qualified for the Gold Cup and following the Nations League draw in Las Vegas in March, the Michael Johnson-coached Senior Men’s National team would have required not only special attention, but almost unlimited funding.

In fact, when contacted last evening, president of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) Juman-Yassin told Chronicle Sport that the GFF sent a letter for funding, only this week, and at the time, the Olympic Association was not in a position to honour the request.

“We just took on the funding of the Rugby team for their Olympic Qualifier (in the Cayman Islands), so we were not in a position to help the GFF. But they came to us very late. Just this week they sent us a letter, I think it was Monday, but we couldn’t had helped,” said Yassin.

Meanwhile Forde reminded his cynics that under his GFF Executive committee, Guyana has “participated in every international tournament,” but doubled down on their positon, adding, “However, with six Nations League qualification games ahead of us, we are forced to make difficult but necessary financial decisions.”