If FIFA’s (Federation Internationale de Football Association) decision to appoint members of the Normalization Committee without any connection to football here seemed weird, that feeling is now fully justified.
As it is, the Committee’s first major decision smacks of a group with little or no background in the sport, which also lacks the understanding on how to maintain football’s popularity and standard.
The seemingly simple task of granting permission for the Kashif and Shanghai year-end competition was supposed to be a foregone conclusion. Or so it was thought.
According to a Kaieteur News report though, the Normalization Committee, entrusted by the world ruling body to govern Guyana’s football for the next two years, dropped a bombshell by deciding to blank the staging of the Guyana’s most successful and popular tournament.
It means the showpiece football event for 23 years, has been denied for the second consecutive year, and likely for the last time. This competition has been Guyana’s equivalent of England’s FA Cup or Spain’s Super Cup, and one has to wonder whether the committee is aware of the immense developmental benefits the Kashif and Shanghai series has given Guyana’s football from the first time it was first staged in 1989.
Numerous players have developed the competitive edge and skills and have risen from one level to the next, others have gone on to land professional contracts overseas, due to their involvement in the tournament, many have been inspired to take up the sport due to the excitement, and or course the steep rise in the rankings of the Guyana national team in recent times, has been directly and indirectly due to this year-end competition. Not to mention the upsurge in spectator appeal it has brought the sport. All these factors have obviously been lost on this Committee.
In giving Kashif Mohammad and Aubrey ‘Shanghai’ Major and every other member of the promotion group the cold shoulder, the Normalization Committee explained it would allow sub -associations to run individual year-end competitions instead, this year.
And to add insult to injury, the Committee informed Kashif and Shanghai it should stage its competition at another time of the year, in the future.
Such lame explanations will surely anger football fans at home and overseas who are accustomed to making the competition a Christmas staple over the years, and also embarrass the great majority of sub associations which will be unable to stage meaningful competitions between now and Christmas.
With due respect to those sub association administrators, they have never proven to have the professional expertise to pull off any tournament worthy or close to anything Kashif and Shanghai has done. And for the Committee’s information needs, the Kashif and Shanghai competition has its genesis at the Christmas/ New Year’s period, and it will never be the same at any other time. Christmas is intrinsic in its brand and logistically it will be improbable to stage with cricket and the other well entrenched entertainment events at Easter and August. It would be like shifting Mashramani from February to December
Further, the Committee has stated it would be staging its own Guyana Football Federation (GFF) competition at the end of 2015. To suggest this group of greenhorns capable of matching Kashif and Shanghai’s showpiece event, brought off for 23 years by administrators who have lived football most of their lives, is more than mere wishful thinking. It would amount to a miracle.
The Georgetown Football Association, which was controversially given approval to stage their event ahead of Kashif and Shanghai last year, tried and after three attempts has already thrown in the towel. Amidst allegations of shockingly not paying some teams prize money, as well as owing officials and dishonouring sponsorship obligations, the GFA decided it will stage a domestic series instead this year.
And one has to wonder whether the Committee was influenced by that move, given that all of its members are Georgetown-based without any having any known attachments to Linden, where Kashif and Shanghai originated.
One also has to ponder whether Committee members have ever had the Kashif and Shanghai tournament experience in lieu of their bewildering decision.
It can permanently drive the group’s founders, Major and Mohammad, away from the sport; even though their contributions to football have surpassed many a GFF president.
Based on its wretched start, one will shudder to comprehend the results of this Committee in making future decisions to arrive at national teams, implement development programmes, find money to run the sport and reconstruct the national ruling body’s constitution.
FIFA made a timely intervention of ridding Guyana of the previous lame duck administration, but it would interesting to know on whose recommendations the Normalisation Committee members were appointed. It seems tantamount to digging a hole to fill a hole.
