By Orin Dividson
Now is as good a time as any to rid Guyana’s football of its biggest scourge ever.
That discipline’s fraternity needs no better opportunity to send Colin Klass packing following the national team’s bold and brilliant decision in threatening a mass retirement act unless the Guyana Football Federation president rids himself of all involvement in the sport.
The players have started a move that the administrators around the country should have done ages ago.
This is because there has never been a more obnoxious administrative reign in Guyana’s sport history than this present one.
No other single sports’ administrator in the country has perpetrated the levels of mismanagement than the current GFF president has done to the local game.
Which is why the national team acted in such a decisive manner.
They have had enough of being treated like dirt, of being made to represent the GFF and the country without any modicum of respect and being taken for fools for 20 long years.
No sportsman in this modern era of sports would tolerate playing match after match without no training venue, not even the smallest stipend and without the basic necessities for training camps such as adequate food and accommodation.
And this is not only a recent development. National players have had to endure this level of atrocity for almost all of the 20 years Klass has held on to the presidency.
This is from a national association that is gifted 50 million dollars, every year for close to 10 years from the world governing body FIFA.
None of that money can be accounted for by any visible tangible proof, nor of the sponsorship cash and other revenue that have passed through the GFF’s hands over the years.
The extent of Klass’s disdain for the entire football fraternity was revealed in one rare recent interview he gave to Kaieteur News’ Rawle Welch.
He stated that the issue of the missing millions made from the Guyana vs. Suriname World Cup game held at the 15,000 seat Providence cricket stadium, had been “settled amicably” with the hired promoters.
To add insult to injury Klass said no legal action could be taken due to FIFA regulations, when only last year FIFA itself was pursuing a lawsuit in the United States court over a sponsorship dispute with credit card company Master Card.
That is the type of deception the GFF president has been allowed to get away with for two decades.
But all the deception and exploitation has to end sometime and that time is now. It means that all those administrators that have been propping up the Klass regime all these years have no choice but to accede to the national team’s desire and give them the support they now need.
But the national players must not wait on those officials from the various sub-associations.
They have to continue their gutsy stand by acquiring cooperation from every club around the country to shut down the GFF.
The players know they are the power players in the sport and not the administrators.
Without them there will be no football and hence no need for administrators such as the likes of Klass. The national team has done all the right things so far and their quest to involve FIFA vice president Jack Warner should be complimented. Warner has made himself into the Czar of Caribbean football who presides over every happening in all those countries.
He never ceases to proclaim his good intentions for and the upliftment of the sport, if not in the entire CONCACAF region of which he is the president, more so in the English speaking Caribbean.
The Guyana players are reaching out to him for help and he should have no hesitation meeting them and to put an end to all the atrocities that are destroying the country’s football by forcing Klass to resign.
Warner has more power and influence than any West Indian sports official and has been playing a god fatherly role to many presidents in the region including Klass.
Therefore the FIFA power player has no better chance to rescue Guyana’s football than by instructing Klass to go now, not later, now!.
Warner has helped Trinidad and Tobago acquire four international football stadiums; has helped numerous players win professional contracts in Europe.
All Guyana is asking for is help in getting a new football president.
The highly successful Kashif and Shanghai organization also has to give its support to the players’ action too by disassociating itself from Klass when they stage the annual K&F tournament next month.
Any sanction from Klass’s GFF would be worthless now because the players are deadly serious about bringing football to a standstill and without them there will be no competition of any type.
Kashif and Shanghai has connections to Warner which could be vital in the players getting an early audience with the FIFA titan.
But in the end the Trinidadian holds the key for ending one of the longest and most unsatisfactory reign in local football history.
The ball is squarely in Warner’s court now. It is time to score that much needed goal for Guyana’s football salvation.Give Klass the boot.
