The performances of the national football team in the recent regional fixtures make as compelling an argument as local football has ever made for a far greater measure of national attention to the sport.
Those performances have elevated the country’s standing in the FIFA world-ratings. The scoreless draw against Cuba in the DIGICEL Cup in January would have been an unthinkable result only a few years ago.
The appearance of the `Reggae Boyz’ and the `Soca Warriors’ in the two previous World Cup finals were achievements of historic proportions for Caribbean football.
While cricket is still far from surrendering its place as the premier regional game, the feats of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago point to a preparedness to elevate football above the level of a “poor relation” even though it has to be said that one swallow – or in this case, two – does not make a summer.
Lest Guyanese begin to harbour illusions that our own football may be poised for a quantum leap to a level approaching the international stage, it is worth contemplating the huge investment in facilities, coaching and other forms of national support that took Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago to the World Cup finals.
Filling the void between the dream and its realization is the challenge that must be taken seriously if the momentum created by the Golden Jaguars is to be sustained.
It is also worth bearing in mind that while several players from other parts of the Caribbean have “broken into” the “big time” of English football with all that it offers in terms of financial and other rewards, Guyana’s home-grown players must work – in many cases at poorly remunerated jobs – which, of course, allows them time to give only part-time attention to a game that requires full-time commitment if they are to excel.
Here in Guyana football – more specifically football tournaments – is supported primarily by private sponsorship even though the annual Kashif & Shanghai Football Tournament is one of the competitions that attract some level of state financing.
And while President Bharrat Jagdeo’s recent allocation of state funding to football at the club level suggests that government may now be prepared to invest more money in the development of the game, there is need to go beyond the mere allocation of money if the sport is to be elevated above its present level.
An enabling environment in which football – or any national game for that matter – can flourish requires the collaborative effort of the public and private sectors and the national and regional bodies responsible for the administration of the game.
The reasons, of course, have to do with the specific roles that each has to play in (a) nurturing the game at the community and schools’ levels; (b) providing the physical infrastructure for the playing of the game; (c) providing the administrative infrastructure for the competent management of the game; (d) providing the technical (coaching) expertise and (e) funding the development of the game.
Each of these responsibilities requires separate – and, in some instances – collaborative inputs from government, the private sector and the respective institutions that govern the sport including the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) and its respective sub-associations.
The absence of the aforementioned collaborative effort accounts – chiefly, though not exclusively – for the underdevelopment of football as a national game and that, sadly, will remain the case until the stakeholders recognize the virtues of working together. The fact that the “Golden Jaguars” have done as well as they have recently is hardly a barometer of the overall level to which the game has developed locally.
The reality is that many of the players on the current national team ply their trade in Trinidad and Tobago where the standard of the game is much higher. The question that arises, therefore, is whether the trend of exporting players to Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere to refine their talents must be continued or whether those responsible for the development of the sport, including the government, are willing to create an environment at home in which those talents can be refined in order to ensure that the proficiency of the national team does not end with the Golden Jaguars.
It is worth pointing out that despite the existence of the various sub-associations country-wide, Guyana appears not to have been able to consistently produce high-quality players outside of traditional “power centres,” of Regions Four and Ten, a circumstance that is borne out both by the fact that the places on the national team are monopolized by players from those regions and by the fact that local tournaments are invariably won by teams from either Georgetown or Linden.
It is also worth wondering why Guyana has failed over the years to take advantage of geography – so to speak – to secure the support of the major hemispheric “powers” in football, notably Brazil, to assist in the development of the game locally. While the barrier of language and the logistical difficulties of travel have posed challenges to the development of people to people ties between Guyana and the rest of South America, it should be pointed out that those have not completely prevented the development of broader bilateral and multilateral relations with the rest of the hemisphere, a fact that is underlined by Guyana’s hosting of next month’s Rio Summit.
Significantly, and despite more than two decades of bilateral relations between Guyana and some of the major football “powers in South America – Argentina, Brazil and Colombia – the various “Technical Cooperation Agreements signed with those countries have taken little, if any account of the assistance that those countries are manifestly in a position to offer to local football. This shortcoming is a concrete example of the country’s failure to recognize the increasingly dominant role that sport is playing in international relations and in the enhancement of the image of nation states in the global arena.
The Guyana/Brazil road link, can, of course, help to improve sporting relations between the two countries but only if there is a determined effort at the level of government to make that happen. South American football, rightly so, looks out towards Europe rather than across to the Caribbean and it will require the diligent use of diplomatic resources to divert our neighbour’s attention. Meanwhile, those in authority must immediately begin to develop a structured initiative at the local level to ensure that they can – to use a popular expression in contemporary sport – take Guyana’s football ‘to the next level.”
