Sean Nero

For­mer na­tion­al foot­ballers Sha­ka His­lop and Kelvin Jack are to­day ap­plaud­ing Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to in­vest $32.6 mil­lion to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of grass­root foot­ball in T&T.

The ath­letes who rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the Fi­fa World Cup Ger­many in 2006, said once this ini­tia­tive was sus­tained, this coun­try would nev­er be in short sup­ply of proven tal­ent from which to draw.

They be­lieved this move would al­ways en­sure that the stan­dard of foot­ball to be wit­nessed at vary­ing lev­els was de­liv­ered with the ap­proval of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and ad­mired the world over.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, dur­ing his 2014/2015 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, said the state made sig­nif­i­cant progress in es­tab­lish­ing and en­abling frame­work, com­pris­ing in­fra­struc­ture, man­age­ment and coach­ing, tal­ent build­ing, wel­fare of elite ath­letes and sport tourism.

"We are build­ing on the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture: the tech­ni­cal frame­work to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball through­out the coun­try has been put in place at an an­nu­al cost of $36.2 mil­lion; the five mul­ti-pur­pose sta­dia have been or are now be­ing up­grad­ed; and com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing groups and na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies are con­tin­u­ing to re­ceive fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance," the min­is­ter said.

Jack com­mend­ed the state for tak­ing the ini­tia­tive, but be­lieved such a pro­gramme need­ed ten times that amount.

"But if that is what they can al­lo­cate right now, so be it. But with­out a doubt they would need more mon­ey than that. That's on­ly 3.2 mil­lion pounds. It's a lot of mon­ey, but it isn't a lot of mon­ey if you know what I am say­ing; if you want to go the way of de­vel­op­ment.

He added, "They need­ed to have the right peo­ple run­ning it. That's the cru­cial is­sue here. The right peo­ple must be run­ning these pro­grammes; peo­ple who un­der­stand foot­ball; peo­ple who (are) qual­i­fied in coach­ing foot­ball; peo­ple who are good at im­part­ing knowl­edge. It's bril­liant that the mon­ey is there to do it, but they need to put the right peo­ple in place to run this pro­gramme or else it's not go­ing to be suc­cess­ful."

Asked if he be­lieved the time had come for the for­mer So­ca War­riors to get in­volved in the sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of T&T foot­ball, Jack re­spond­ed af­fir­ma­tive­ly.

De­pend­ing on which of them would be in­ter­est­ed in get­ting in­volved, he said, T&T had a lot of knowl­edge to gain from this type of en­gage­ment.

Should these cal­i­bre of play­ers be ap­proached and ac­cede to the re­quest, said Jack, lo­cal foot­ball would sure­ly progress.

"The prob­lem is that TTFA is not in­ter­est­ed in tap­ping in­to that knowl­edge. You have all these play­ers here–the on­ly play­ers that have ever gone to a World Cup fi­nal–and you haven't used it (their knowl­edge). They (TTFA) went on a trip the oth­er day over­loaded with staff. Shel­don Phillips brought his dad (Lin­coln Phillips) on board as goal keep­ing coach.

"No dis­re­spect to Lin­coln Phillips who had a great play­ing ca­reer and good coach­ing ca­reer, but it is time for the younger brigade to get in­volved. So far, they have been un­will­ing to utilise these play­ers who were part of the most suc­cess­ful team of T&T's his­to­ry," Jack said.

His­lop, an ES­PN foot­ball com­men­ta­tor and new­ly ap­point­ed Fi­fa in­flu­en­tial In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Board (IFAB) board mem­ber said, too of­ten, lo­cal foot­ball and the fi­nanc­ing of it is fo­cused on the top tier of our game, in par­tic­u­lar, the na­tion­al team.

"I have been crit­i­cal in the past. For years, when World Cup comes about there's a lot of shout­ing and scream­ing and howl­ing about the na­tion­al team. How much mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment, the cor­po­rate sec­tor or who­ev­er it maybe is putting be­hind the na­tion­al team to qual­i­fy for the next World Cup. I have been very crit­i­cal of that ap­proach. As a fan, I am equal­ly an­i­mat­ed every four years when it comes around. But in all hon­esty, I have al­ways felt that for us to con­sis­tent­ly threat­en to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, we have to take a long term view or our game and the de­vel­op­ment of it," he said.

His­lop added, "Our plan­ning for World Cup 2018 should have start­ed a decade ago. I think the de­vel­op­ment and this an­nounce­ment buys in­to that think­ing.

"We have to start de­vel­op­ing. We have to start prepar­ing our young ath­letes at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble lev­el, be­cause I feel it's such a steep learn­ing curve and we are al­ready at a dis­ad­van­tage to most na­tions sim­ply be­cause of our coun­try's size and the play­er pool that a pop­u­la­tion of 1.5 mil­lion can af­ford. We have to do oth­er things and I think this is a sig­nif­i­cant step in that di­rec­tion," he said.