Con­ca­caf head of mar­ket­ing de­vel­op­ment Dr Ju­lian Stan­cules­cu be­lieves that it is an op­por­tune time for foot­ball in this coun­try to el­e­vate to a lev­el that will see it com­pete and stand on a sim­i­lar lev­el to some of the more de­vel­oped foot­balling na­tions on the glob­al stage.

The Ro­man­ian-born for­mer head of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion has been fol­low­ing the events of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) close­ly in re­cent times, par­tic­u­lar­ly what has tran­spired since the Con­ca­caf Con­gress in Pana­ma City last month. He is urg­ing the coun­try to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ty be­fore it, if there is in fact a de­sire to use foot­ball as a dri­ving force for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al ties as well as for glob­al brand­ing.

"I think it's a great mo­ment in TTFF foot­ball his­to­ry and a great pe­ri­od as things are tak­ing off. I be­lieve that T&T foot­ball needs the sup­port of all its part­ners to move things for­ward," Stan­cules­cu said.

"I think the right in­vest­ment in the brand and foot­ball pro­grams can tru­ly bring a good re­turn in the short, midterm and long term. There is no doubt that foot­ball here can­not re­al­ly move for­ward with­out this kind of sup­port so I will strong­ly en­cour­age com­pa­nies from the coun­try and gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions to get in­volved in the pro­grams and be part of this great ini­tia­tive called foot­ball which brings so many won­der­ful things to our so­ci­ety."

The Ro­man­ian-born brings more than 25 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the or­gan­i­sa­tion of glob­al events, in­clud­ing the Win­ter and Sum­mer Olympic Games, Fi­fa World Cups, Con­ti­nen­tal Con­fed­er­a­tion com­pe­ti­tions, and many na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions for dif­fer­ent sports.

Stan­cules­cu holds a doc­tor­ate from the Acad­e­my of Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies in Bucharest, Ro­ma­nia, and a Mas­ters in the Sci­ence of Man­age­ment.

He has al­ready sat in meet­ings with TTFF pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips and ex­pects to see forth­com­ing re­sults that will show progress.

"I think that by sit­ting down with the del­e­ga­tion of the TTFF, I have learned about the new ini­tia­tives that are now in the plans for the next few months of this year and the next few years.

"I was very hap­py to learn that there are a lot of ac­tiv­i­ties planned such as na­tion­al team games, grass-roots foot­ball, fes­ti­vals as well as so­lid­i­fy­ing the cor­po­rate sup­port, the struc­tur­ing of the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­grams and some of the oth­er ar­eas of the fed­er­a­tion in or­der to bring the TTFF to an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el at which it should be and ob­vi­ous­ly bring the suc­cess that has been there in the past. There have been suc­cess­es like go­ing to the World Cup, or whether it is go­ing to the Gold Cup, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments with good re­sults."

Stan­cules­cu gave an as­sur­ance of his sup­port and that of the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body to T&T.

"Ab­solute­ly, what­ev­er we can do to sup­port the TTFF and what­ev­er can be done in any oth­er way to help pro­mote the game is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. Every mem­ber of our con­fed­er­a­tion ul­ti­mate­ly brings an in­creased lev­el of de­vel­op­ment and progress to the con­fed­er­a­tion it­self."

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