By Ras Wadada

LONG serving Barbadian football administrator, Randy Harris, who has been acting at the helm of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) for just under two years, is confident that the Region will recognise its deficiencies and effectively implement policies to get the ‘Beautiful Game’ to some semblance of proper structure and management.

In an exclusive interview with Chronicle Sport, the 65 year-old Harris  who is also the boss for the Barbados Football Association (BFA), highlighted the major impediments of the sport’s development in the Region that he recognised even before assuming leadership of the CFU.

“The thing about the CFU is that management structures were not there, so it needed some checks and balances, and we thought it wise to appoint a Director of Finance, to have a paid staff, including a highly qualified accountant, to make sure our finances and business are being administered in a proper way, since there was a lack of accountability in the past.

There is no denying the previous past Presidents of CFU carried a lot of clout so most things were said and done. Prior to 2016, we in the Caribbean as Administrators of football lacked proper management skills and definitely had no sustainable plan to take the football to the next level so basically we need to set a proper platform that has sound management skills to execute the policies”, Harris posited.

The experienced football Administrator who has been the elected president of the BFA since 2012 recounted how he rose to the top position in CFU.

“We at the BFA had so much work to do that it never crossed my mind to be part of the CFU’s Executive Council, but we had some problems where the former president, Antiguan Gordon Derrick had some problems with FIFA, not concerning the CFU but concerning the Antigua & Barbuda Football Association of which he was General Secretary.

After he recused himself from CFU because of the ongoing investigation by FIFA, I was invited to become part of the Executive Council as a member and when FIFA made their decision to suspend Derrick the senior Vice President, at the time, Reginald Francisco of Curacao took over the leadership.

At a Congress in 2018 it was however decided to vote for an acting President and I defeated Francisco. The next year there were elections and I was elected to see out the tenure of the executive which ended this year. Due to the current COV-19l pandemic, elections for all positions due are yet to be held. Although my main concern was the state of the sport in my native land where I served as President, I was persuaded to take up the reigns of the CFU as a number of Member Associations felt I should take up the leadership.It was very heartening to me to know that after previous Presidents encountered so much problems with FIFA and the football world that they had the confidence in me. I knew that I was capable and so decided to give it a shot”.

The former Lodge School student informed that after assuming leadership he went about, with support, restructuring the Organisation.

“My first order of business was to bring back some semblance of creditability and compliance to the CFU as an Organisation. We had two immediate past Presidents of the CFU who were actually accused of committing a number of crimes involving football.

Basically I know that we in the Caribbean will now have to show the world that those ousted Presidents do not define Caribbean football leaders. I got a lot of help and legally we worked on the Constitution and put a number of things in place to have written rules and regulations to manage the business of Caribbean football and that was done successfully. I had said that once that was done and some semblance of confidence is returned to the Caribbean we will work on the development of the game”.

According to Harris, emphasis should be on our youths and coaches, in going forward.

“I think we at CFU should focus on providing more competition in the Region for our young footballers from U-14 upwards. The lack of international exposure for the young players has always hampered our performances at the Continental level. We are not short of football talent in the Caribbean but their football intellect is behind and that is because they lack playing time. It is also equally important to develop and train coaches so that the young players could develop positive attitudes. Too many young players possess real negative attitudes and are being encouraged with such behavior. That must be corrected. We also have a way of tribalising everything we don’t agree with and that is a big problem in the Region as well.

On the question of a professional League for the Region Harris informed,

“CONCACAF recognizes that there is a problem and likewise the Caribbean countries realise that if they don’t have professional football they cannot compete with amateur players against other countries with professionals. That is a recipe for disaster for the Caribbean. CONCACAF has promised to do some research and are in the process of selecting a committee with people who have experience with success in professional leagues and those who have tried in the Region. Their task is to come up with the plans for the Caribbean to run a sustainable professional league”.

 Harris also voiced his concern with the low level of participation on the distaff side, “We need to find a way in the Caribbean to get more girls playing football since  a multiplicity of opportunities are available, especially at Colleges in the USA where Women football is popular and in the professional leagues in Europe”.

Harris declared that as soon as the situation of current mandatory living conditions return to normalcy elections for all positions on the executive of the CFU will be contested.