January 3 – Jack Warner (pictured), the FIFA vice-president, has warned that unless football receives more support in Trinidad & Tobago than the country’s national teams could soon be facing a major crisis.
Warner, who is also the President of CONCACAF, is an advisor to the Trinidad &Tobago Football Federation and claimed the local governing body were being faced with serious challenges of funding the national programme and said volunteerism could be an option if adequate finance was not sourced.
He said: ”We had a meeting two weeks ago to look at various technical staffs for our teams but the underlying factor has been and continues to be funding; who will pay for the staff for these teams.
“The kind of salaries we have been paying, there is nobody – and surely not a Jack Warner -who will do this.
“Unless we get some guarantor, some firm or some Government who will pay these salaries, we will have to go back to basics where we will have to go back to volunteers who will do this for the good of the game.
“And that is the guided principle we will go by.
“The T&TFF and I will be looking at this closer and by the second week in January we should be able to come to some kind of decision.”
Trinidad & Tobago, along with Jamaica, are the two powerhouses in football in the English-speaking Caribbean.
The Soca Warriors became only the second side from that region to reach a FIFA World Cup – Jamaica were the first – when they qualified for Germany in 2006, when they were drawn in the same group as England, Paraguay and Sweden.
They failed in their bid to repeat the achievement last October when they finished bottom of the six-team CONCACAF standings in the final round World Cup qualifiers for South Africa 2010.
With a large national programme spanning the senior, junior and women’s levels, Trinidad & Tobago reportedly run large budgets in order to adequately prepare their squads.
Warner called on the Government’s Sports Ministry to play a more serious role in helping to develop sports in the country.
He said: ”I wish the sporting fraternity will get many more benefits from the Ministry of Sport and the Sport Company.
“I wish they will spend less money in administration and more on the sport itself.
“I hope they would realize that the sporting associations throughout the country need more support and of course hopefully the Sports Ministry can also realise that the country would need more support in hosting the FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup in 2010.”