Kevin Sunich

The Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion is bent on en­sur­ing that coun­try wins the bid to host the 2018 World Cup. This was ev­i­dent as the FA part­nered with the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) to kick off its 33rd Con­gress with a din­ner in the Ball­room of the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel on Fri­day night. It is the first time that a for­eign as­so­ci­a­tion has part­nered with CFU for such an oc­ca­sion. Re­cent­ly ap­point­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Chair­man of Eng­land's 2018 bid­ding com­mit­tee, David Dein said in no un­cer­tain terms that his role was to en­sure that his coun­try wins the bid. The for­mer vice-chair­man of pre­mier league club Ar­se­nal gave a pre­sen­ta­tion which in­clud­ed com­ments from for­mer Eng­lish na­tion­al play­ers in Alan Shear­er and Hope Pow­ell, who is now man­ag­er of the women's team, on why Eng­land should be giv­en the 2018 bid.

The Eng­lish na­tion­al play­ers, who are al­so in­volved, have pledged their ap­pear­ance fees for their friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al match against Egypt on March 3 to Haiti. There will al­so be a num­ber of oth­er pro­grammes fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Eng­land to help the earth­quake dev­as­tat­ed coun­try. "Where there is foot­ball there is hope," was the mes­sage sent by Eng­land's de­fend­er Rio Fer­di­nand to CFU pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er in­di­cat­ing that all is not lost for Haiti es­pe­cial­ly where Eng­land is con­cerned. Warn­er, who is al­so Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, was pre­sent­ed with two gifts from Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Ar­se­nal in the form of two jer­seys bear­ing his name and No 7 and No 9 re­spec­tive­ly. For­mer Pre­mier­ship foot­ball star David Gi­no­la was al­so apart of the Eng­lish FA del­e­ga­tion present.

Warn­er in his wel­come ad­dress thanked the del­e­gates for at­tend­ing, while sin­gling out the pres­ence of Yves Jean-Bart, pres­i­dent of the Haiti Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FHF). "He along with 32 of the fed­er­a­tion of­fi­cials were hold­ing a meet­ing when the quake struck on Jan­u­ary 12. He was the on­ly one to es­cape af­ter the FHF head­quar­ters came crum­bling down. His pres­ence here alone speaks vol­umes," said Warn­er. Jean-Bart, in a short com­ment, thanked God for spar­ing his life. "God saved our lives and on be­half of the peo­ple of Haiti, I would like to thank you for all the sup­port giv­en to help us," the FHF pres­i­dent. New­ly ap­point­ed, Op­po­si­tion Leader and UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress on the chang­ing role of women, said it is good to hear Fi­fa pres­i­dent Joseph Sepp Blat­ter de­clare that the fu­ture of foot­ball is fem­i­nine.

"In sport women have demon­strat­ed their im­mense abil­i­ty and tal­ent of­ten with and against their male coun­ter­parts. But this is not a bat­tle for su­pe­ri­or­i­ty, one over the oth­er. It is a strug­gle for equal­i­ty and jus­tice," said the Op­po­si­tion leader. She said women's foot­ball must play a vi­tal role in build­ing the self es­teem of girls and women and break­ing down the bar­ri­ers of gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. "So if to­day women's foot­ball helps to al­ter per­cep­tions and ad­just at­ti­tudes to­wards women, I will take the field, well, per­haps not as a play­er but maybe an of­fi­cial of some kind," Per­sad-Bisses­sar. CFU rep­re­sents 25 Fi­fa mem­ber na­tions, as well as five ter­ri­to­ries that are not af­fil­i­at­ed to Fi­fa. The sport's Caribbean gov­ern­ing body's con­gress got un­der way yes­ter­day.