WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Af­ter be­ing sacked by Cen­tral FC, vet­er­an mid­field­er Mar­vin Oliv­er is now hop­ing to start his own coach­ing school to make ends meet.

He told the Guardian yes­ter­day he was ini­tial­ly think­ing about get­ting in­to agri­cul­ture, but feels his be­lief and faith in the Almighty God has led him to deal with the youth of the na­tion through his God-giv­en foot­ball tal­ent. Be­fore the acad­e­my could be start­ed how­ev­er the 41-year old rasta­far­i­an, is call­ing on a num­ber of suc­cess­ful sports­men from the San Juan/San­ta Cruz area such as West In­dies bat­ting leg­end Bri­an Lara, broth­ers Dwayne and Dar­ren Bra­vo, Olympic track­star Ato Boldon and ex-na­tion­al foot­ballers Hec­tor Sam, Mar­vin An­drews and Ja­son Scot­land to help him ac­quire equip­ment such as foot­balls, cones, goal­posts, bibs, cool­ers and uni­forms etc to get his project off the ground.

He is al­so call­ing on cor­po­rate T&T to join him as he em­barks on this new jour­ney in his life. Oliv­er, who was asked to as­sist Cen­tral FC coach Dale Saun­ders af­ter the fir­ing of Ross Rus­sell late last year, is promis­ing that his acad­e­my will be one with a dif­fer­ence. "It will not on­ly teach young peo­ple about foot­ball but it must al­so tell young bud­ding foot­ballers about the im­por­tance of Almight God in their lives be­cause of what he has done and con­tin­ues to do for them" Oliv­er said.

With no means of in­come present­ly, the dread-locks foot­baller has set the East­er va­ca­tion for the start of his acad­e­my at the San Juan Sec­ondary ground.

On­ly last year he grad­u­at­ed with a FI­FA Grass­roots Cer­tifi­cate at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um last year, a course he did with Sam and an­oth­er for­mer na­tion­al strik­er Ker­ry Bap­tiste.

He ex­plained he has been ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed by the re­cent de­vel­op­ments at the Cen­tral 'Sharks' as he had done noth­ing to of­fend them. Oliv­er, whose na­tion­al ca­reer be­gan with a Jean Lily­white-coached Un­der-15 team that was tri­umphant at an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment in Mar­tinique in 1990, was fired when he asked if it was al­right for him to be sent out on loan with an­oth­er club.

Club man­ag­er Kevin Jef­freys de­liv­ered a ter­mi­na­tion let­ter to him soon af­ter his re­quest at a train­ing ses­sion at the train­ing ground of the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va, but he has since said he will chal­lenge the dis­missal, al­though Cen­tral FC man­age­ment re­spond­ed a few days lat­er, say­ing the let­ter it gave to him was not a ter­mi­na­tion let­ter but a warn­ing that his con­tract can be ter­mi­nat­ed.

Oliv­er is ex­pect­ed to meet with his At­tor­neys to­day to de­cide on a way for­ward. He told Guardian his life had been turned up­sided down, with his chil­dren ques­tion­ing what he would do now to gen­er­ate in­come. "My biggest son in the Unit­ed States Ja­mari Oliv­er called me and said he was dis­ap­point­ed to have heard what had hap­pened to me at Cen­tral FC" Oliv­er said.

He said while he does not hold any mal­ice against the club's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent San­cho, he was sad­dened by claims by him that they helped him (Oliv­er) build his house, when he did not even re­ceive some­thing as small as a nail, from the club to con­struct his home.

"Be­cause of this fab­ri­ca­tion, my chil­dren have been ques­tion­ing me on whether I re­ceived monies to build the house but spent it out" Oliv­er con­clud­ed.