An­ton Corneal, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has stressed that for lo­cal foot­ball clubs to com­pete in fu­ture Caribbean Foot­ball Union or CON­CA­CAF com­pe­ti­tions, they will need to be part of the “New Elite Foot­ball League” (NE­FL).

In 2018, both two-time win­ners W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral FC were the last clubs to rep­re­sent T&T at the CFU Club Cham­pi­onship, while a year lat­er North East Stars (2017 Pro League cham­pi­ons) and W Con­nec­tion (2017 Pro League run­ners-up), were not al­lowed to com­pete in the 2019 CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship as the as­so­ci­a­tion did not prop­er­ly ex­e­cute its club li­cens­ing pro­gramme.

Ear­li­er this month the T&TFA is­sued a press re­lease that stat­ed that it was in the process of es­tab­lish­ing a new top-flight lo­cal foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion “New Elite Foot­ball League” with a pro­posed start­ing date of late Sep­tem­ber 2022 or ear­ly Oc­to­ber for the next three years.

Dur­ing a one-on-one in­ter­view, Corneal ex­plained that T&TFA is seek­ing an in­vest­ment of $3.5 mil­lion per year from the T&T Gov­ern­ment for the next three years with the com­pe­ti­tion com­pris­ing ten to 12 clubs with each club re­ceiv­ing $250,000 for their op­er­a­tional cost dur­ing the eight months of the league.

In ad­di­tion, $500,000 each will go to­wards the ad­min­is­tra­tive costs of run­ning the league by the T&TFA and cov­er the ref­er­ee’s salaries and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es in ei­ther the TT Su­per League or an­oth­er sec­ond-tier league.

The low­er lev­els of zon­al foot­ball will be giv­en a fi­nan­cial pack­age of $150,000 with $50,000 geared to­wards Coach­ing Ed­u­ca­tion schol­ar­ships. How­ev­er, to com­pete in the league clubs are re­quired to pay $75,000.

Corneal, a for­mer na­tion­al Un­der-17, and Un­der-20 FI­FA World Cup coach as well as an as­sis­tant to Hol­land’s Leo Bee­hakker at the 2006 FI­FA World Cup in Ger­many, said, “We are do­ing this for the coun­try, it’s not for the T&TFA or to ben­e­fit the as­so­ci­a­tion, but it’s to make sure that we can pro­vide the game and a prop­er league and that mon­ey is turned right back in­to the run­ning the league.

He added, “Foot­ball is not be­ing played, and what has been played in the three leagues we have sup­port­ed (Tiger Tanks, Next Lev­el Un­der-20, and As­cen­sion Foot­ball League), have re­al­ly sup­port­ed the game, and now it’s our turn (T&TFA) to put a struc­ture in place and some of the ben­e­fits is it will pro­vide the chance to play in the Caribbean and CON­CA­CAF Club Cham­pi­onships, and you will have to play in that league. Be­cause we will like the play­ers to be ex­posed and that’s one of the faster ways to get the play­ers ex­posed. So again in the very near fu­ture, we will be able to tell the type of feed­back we get and reg­is­tra­tions from all the clubs.

Due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, pro­fes­sion­al league foot­ball was stopped in T&T in 2019, and apart from the three leagues men­tioned, no or­gan­ised com­pe­ti­tion has tak­en place even though the re­stric­tion on sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been lift­ed by the gov­ern­ment and Corneal was mind­ful of the im­por­tance of T&T not falling fur­ther be­hind.”

Corneal, a cer­ti­fied coach ed­u­ca­tor and Tech­ni­cal Ex­pert with FI­FA con­tin­ued, “We have lost two to three years with youth play­ers, years we can­not get back and de­vel­op­ment we can­not get back, and again all we can do is pret­ty much re­set, and get ready again, and make sure our pro­grams are up and run­ning, and when it comes to league foot­ball, there is noth­ing like the now, so if we can do this in as short as space a time as pos­si­ble it will be great.”

Corneal, who re­turned to the TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor for the third time re­vealed, “I re­alised that youth foot­ball is one of the ar­eas that we have blun­dered in the past.

“We don’t look at long-term de­vel­op­ment and we have looked at it in spurts some­times I be­lieve 15 years ago, and then there was an­oth­er time we looked at youth foot­ball and give it its due share and we need to do so right now and make sure that the de­vel­op­ment pro­grams are in place and they are sus­tained over a pe­ri­od of time, and in the long term it will help with the chang­ing of the lev­el of the game in eight to ten years.

“For a league, a meet­ing of in­ter­est­ed stake­hold­ers was held over the week­end. At the last meet­ing, every­one was ba­si­cal­ly on the same page and recog­nised the chal­lenges that we do have and we are just here to find our way.”

He said, “There is a need for the game to be played as our young play­ers need to ply their trade and I think we owe it to them as an as­so­ci­a­tion to pro­vide that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“The idea of a new league came about be­cause the oth­er leagues are not play­ing and we thought why not T&TFA with as­sis­tance to gov­erned the league gives some of the for­mer teams that are com­ing out of the Pro League and the Su­per League the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play.

“The way we did reg­is­tra­tion is to see the in­ter­est of teams in both leagues and that’s go­ing to give us a guide and whether it be pro­fes­sion­al if there is the fi­nan­cial sup­port be­hind it as there is a plan where we will look at what type of sup­port we get from the gov­ern­ment, cor­po­rate T&T and from T&TFA them­selves, and then we will come up with a plan on how well we can re­al­ly as­sist those teams.

With re­gards to the fi­nan­cial strain the league may come un­der, Corneal said he thinks the league’s gov­er­nance and op­er­a­tions would not cost any­thing ex­tra be­cause a lot those ad­min­is­tra­tive work will come out of T&TFA with per­sons that are al­ready hired, so there may not be an ad­di­tion­al cost.

We have to find clever ways of mak­ing this work and mak­ing sure that it is sus­tain­able be­cause we don’t want it go­ing to a sit­u­a­tion where we don’t have the sup­port af­ter two or three years, and then we are look­ing at a new league again.

Look­ing at the pos­si­ble struc­ture of the com­pe­ti­tion, Corneal said, “I think the struc­ture of the league will be sim­i­lar to what we had in the past (TT Pro League and Su­per League) with two tiers of foot­ball with ten or 12 teams in the top tier, and then the sec­ond tier of pos­si­ble 16 teams.

“But again that is go­ing to be guid­ed by the num­ber of teams that do reg­is­ter, and of course lets’ not for­get zon­al foot­ball as it’s so im­por­tant that we con­tin­ue with the zones as they are the ones that re­al­ly take care of the mass­es.

“The young play­ers get to play in zon­al teams and once they have ex­celled you will find that the pro­fes­sion­al teams and su­per league teams will start look­ing at them, so there needs to be a path­way, and we are hop­ing to cre­ate that path­way for young play­ers.

Not­ing that prop­er plan­ning has been tak­en in­to the set­ting up of the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter fail­ing to come to a so­lu­tion on a new league with the Pro League and Su­per League, Corneal then point­ed out, “We have been in dis­cus­sions with the Pro League and Su­per League I think for the past two years, and we have even had in­put from UE­FA, FI­FA, and CON­CA­CAF on pos­si­ble di­rec­tions, and one of the ar­eas that were very con­cern­ing to me is that we could not come to a head or we could not start a league, and I think that is a pri­or­i­ty.”