Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les is prais­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) which is be­ing man­aged by the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee head­ed by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, for their role in help­ing with the up­grade of the sport via two sem­i­nars la­belled 'There is Hope' and 'Every­body In'.

The ses­sions last­ed for some four months and in­clud­ed vir­tu­al lec­tures by of­fi­cials of some of the world's top foot­ball clubs. Tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Dion La Fou­cade spear­head­ed the en­tire pro­ceed­ings and was the one to have reached out to the clubs' of­fi­cials.

For ex­am­ple, the 'Every­body In' pro­gramme com­prised of John Owens, the Liv­er­pool FC man­ag­er who lec­tured on de­ci­sion-mak­ing and prin­ci­ples of the game; Ben Ash­by, the As­ton Vil­la Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer who spoke on De­vel­op­ing the play­er; Dean White­house, the Man­ches­ter Unit­ed acad­e­my coach talked about Tal­ent Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; and Car­los San­ta­ma­ri­na, the Ath­leti­co Madrid coach lec­tur­ing on the Phi­los­o­phy and Method­ol­o­gy at his club, among many oth­ers.

The sem­i­nars were giv­en the thumbs up by many of the par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­bers, in­clud­ing the schools league. There were al­so sev­er­al oth­er high-pro­file in­struc­tors such as Pe­ter Au­gus­tine, an in­struc­tor from the Eng­lish FA who spoke on - In­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ship de­vel­op­ment; Mark Rivers who, as an in­struc­tor for the Eng­lish FA and for Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship gi­ants Ar­se­nal, ex­plained the im­por­tance of Play­ing and coach­ing phi­los­o­phy de­vel­op­ment, while Ian Brun­skill, who works for both the Chi­na foot­ball and the Eng­lish FA, de­liv­ered a ses­sion on Un­der­stand­ing for­eign cul­ture.

Mean­while, the oth­er part of the sem­i­nar called 'There is Hope' was sin­gled out for play­ers from dif­fer­ent sport­ing dis­ci­plines and at­tract­ed in­struc­tors in­clud­ing Karyn Forbes, the T&T women's foot­ball cap­tain, sailor An­drew Lewis, bat­ting icon Bri­an Lara, Ka­masha Robert­son- Martens, the bad­minton ace, La Fou­cade, se­nior men's foot­ball team cap­tain Khaleem Hy­land, Car­los Ed­wards, for­mer T&T mid­field­er, and Ken­wyne Jones, the cur­rent T&T Women's foot­ball team coach, among many oth­ers.

Gon­za­les in a re­lease said: "I will like to thank the TTFA and the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee for the 'There is Hope' mo­ti­va­tion­al sem­i­nars and the 'Every­body In' coach­ing se­ries con­cep­tu­alised by the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the TTFA.

"Mr La Fou­cade made it his busi­ness to send all the reg­is­tra­tion in­for­ma­tion for all our coach­es and play­ers on a con­sis­tent ba­sis.

"From the feed­back for play­ers and coach­es, these sem­i­nars were very well re­ceived and very in­for­ma­tive and mo­ti­va­tion­al be­cause of the lev­el of and qual­i­ty of pre­sen­ters. Mr La Fou­cade even sent the record­ings of all the sem­i­nars for coach­es who could not have at­tend­ed which is quite com­mend­able."

He not­ed: "Mr La Fou­cade has demon­strat­ed very suc­cess­ful­ly the abil­i­ty to col­lab­o­rate and net­work with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pre­sen­ters for the ben­e­fit of our beloved na­tion while we all are go­ing through a pan­dem­ic which is chal­leng­ing."