Jack Warner slams Cup winners for being greedy

By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year

December 8 – Jack Warner, the President of CONCACAF, has hit out at Jamaica’s national team for a series of cash demands they made during their successful defence of the Digicel Caribbean Cup.

The team demanded that the Jamaican Football Federation (JFF) pay them a fee of $1,200 (£760) per match plus 80 per cent of any prize money or they would have withdrawn.

Captain Horace Burrell, President of the cash-strapped JFF, used his own funds to meet their demands.

Warner, who is also President of the Caribbean Football Union and a vice-president of FIFA, claimed that the players should have put have put the national interests ahead of their own.

“I have felt in many ways the pain of Captain Burrell, because what he had to go through to reach this stage, for me it was tough,” said Warner after Jamaica beat Guadeloupe 5-4 on penalties in the final in Martinique to win the first prize of $120,000 (£76,000).

“To be held to ransom, and in my humble view, to be blackmailed by a team is unacceptable, and I want to say to you that the pain he has felt I feel for him, for the Caribbean, because it is a precedent that will be set in the Caribbean, unless we begin to stop it at this point in time.”

Warner is currently locked in his own dispute with Trinidad and Tobago’s team over bonuses they claim they owed from their successful qualification for the World Cup in Germany four years ago.

“National pride must take precedence over money,” he told the Jamaica Gleaner.

“National pride must take precedence over mercenary feelings and in that context, therefore, I’m pained.

“But at the end of the day, [the] Captain stood up as a big man and he has saved the day; and today, Jamaica and the whole Caribbean are happy, not because Guadeloupe have lost, but because in my humble view, a bona fide country has won and therefore football in the Caribbean has been saved, also.”

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