By Paul Nicholson
June 8 – While Concacaf focus in Moscow next week will be on the United 2026 bid to bring the World Cup back to the region, the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) also faces a potentially pivotal moment.
Currently led by Barbados FA president Randy Harris, the CFU’s 1st vice president who took over the presidency in an interim role following the ban of former president Gordon Derrick, the sub-confederation will vote for a new president on June 11 at its meeting in Moscow to fulfil the two years left of Derrick’s mandate.
Harris is standing in the election and will face US Virgin Islands president Hillaren Frederick (pictured), a much younger man who has previously served on the CFU’s executive committee as well as contested the last CFU presidential election before pulling out in favour of Derrick.
Since that election the CFU has been emaciated as an institution with a previously strong Caribbean unity having been fractured by the politics of CONCACAF and FIFA who have starved the CFU of promised development money and taken control of its senior competitions, rebranding them as Concacaf and merging them into the new Nations League structure.
With none of the grant aid promised by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to sub-confederations making it to the Caribbean, the CFU has been left to run its youth and women’s competitions using its own resources of about $2 million a year (a sum which is the equivalent of Concacaf president Victor Montagliani’s annual salary).
The political approach of divide and conquer through financial aid, or its restriction, has left the CFU fighting for its identity. “The Union needs to be rebranded and it needs a new identity to show our members we are serious about our development. The world needs to see us as trustworthy, hardworking and transparent but most of all we need to be respected. There is no doubt all of these can be achieved but we have to do it together,” said Frederick in a letter to CFU members yesterday.
Frederick announced his candidature in May having been asked to run by a number of CFU members frustrated that the once politically powerful organisation had been split and left without a voice.
“I am offering myself to you as a young but strong leader who has always put the Caribbean first in all my discussions and actions. We in the Caribbean are currently at the cross roads when it comes to our football development; we have lost that comradery and sense of belonging, strength and unity,” said Frederick in a communication to member associations outlining his plans.
Key points in his manifesto included creating annual CFU competitions, ensuring that the CFU and its members receive their financial entitlements and the other forms of assistance they are entitled to from FIFA and Concacaf, and creating a marketing arm to sell the CFU’s commercial opportunities. He also talks about progressing the path to a professional Caribbean league, a much and long talked about concept that so far no-one has been able to deliver.
The CFU under Harris’s leadership has been noticeable by its absence from the world or even continental stage, preferring to sit back and follow the Concacaf programme and PR powerplay. As one insider told Insideworldfootball: “It is a leadership not fighting for all the member associations.”
Harris has not announced a platform or manifesto for his candidacy though with his closer alliance to Infantino (FIFA have just opened an office in Barbados) he doesn’t really need to. The members know the allegiances he brings to the table and for many of them the inaction is fine while they have the preferential support of Concacaf and FIFA in their own countries, or personally. In return they are essentially giving up their democratically earned voice. Few speak out for “fear of retribution” said the Concacaf insider. It can be a retribution both brutal and life-destroying, just ask Gordon Derrick whose ban is one of the darkest moments of FIFA Ethics’ too often politically-driven decision making.
In his election manifesto in 2016 Frederick was somewhat prophetic, saying: “There is no doubt that the Caribbean Football Union has changed from 2011-2016. We are free to self express and to think for ourselves; but we cannot forget what and who we are as a people. Don’t let outside forces and individuals make us forget where we came from and where we want to go. I am a student of Caribbean Football, I know our history and I would defend the Caribbean and CFU with honesty and integrity wherever I go.”
Self expression, ‘who we are as a people’, honesty and integrity…what happened CFU?
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