By Paul Nicholson
January 20 – The Caribbean Football Union (CFU) has indicated that it is broadly in support of the FIFA/CONCACAF reform statutes that will be voted on at the CONCACAF Extraordinary Congress on February 25 in Zurich, the day before FIFA holds its Congress to vote on reform and elect a new president.
But CFU members, holding a general meeting in Antigua, did say they needed to meet again before the proposals were accepted and had a number of issues on which they were seeking clarification.
Central among these was the definition of term limits as well as clarification of the future role of the president as well as the roles of independent directors.
“There was a feeling that the reduction of the power of the elected president could hand over too much control to the general secretary and the operations people. The proposed reforms give the impression that the president’s position is more ceremonial than someone with authority,” said CFU president Gordon Derrick.
“There was also questioning of the role of independent directors. It was asked why do we need them on the council as opposed to critical areas like finance. There is a danger that we have people not involved in football making policy decisions. And then there is the nature of the independence of these directors and are they ever really independent.”
CONCACAF general secretary Ted Howard attended the CFU meetings and was available to answer federation questions. The CFU members will gather again before the February 25 vote to consider the proposals further.
“The CFU is in support of the reforms. We want that to be clear. It is just one or two specific areas with which we have questions, and we will meet and discuss with our membership how we will address these,” said Derrick.
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