The in­au­gur­al Next Lev­el Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed Com­mu­ni­ty (NL­CL) Cup Un­der-15 foot­ball tour­na­ment will get go­ing this week­end fol­low­ing its launch at the VIP Room of the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma on Sun­day.

The tour­na­ment is be­ing spon­sored in part by Next Lev­el Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed, Next Lev­el Foun­da­tion, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T, the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, as well as Ram­s­ingh’s Sports World.

Start­ing this week­end, it will fea­ture ten teams from across Trinidad, with a fur­ther four an­tic­i­pat­ed to par­tic­i­pate in To­ba­go. The high­ly com­pet­i­tive Group A kicks off this Sat­ur­day (March 25), and will fea­ture five teams from the North and East zones (Trend­set­ter Hawks, FC Gin­ga, Queens Park Crick­et Club Youth Acad­e­my, San­ta Rosa FC, and Creek Sports & Cul­tur­al Club).

A very bal­anced Group B will start their group match­es on Sun­day (March 26) and will have five teams from the South and Cen­tral zones (Wa­ter­loo In­sti­tute of Soc­cer Play­ers, Gas­par­il­lo Youths, Moru­ga FC, Cox Foot­ball Acad­e­my, and Point Fortin Youth Foot­ball Acad­e­my).

When fi­nal­ly con­sti­tut­ed, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that Group C will fea­ture four of the top youth teams from To­ba­go and will kick off at a lat­er date.

In his brief ad­dress, tour­na­ment chair­man, Bri­an K Jor­dan ad­vised about the im­por­tance of youth de­vel­op­ment for our young foot­ballers.

He said, “In do­ing the analy­sis, the NL­CL Com­mu­ni­ty Cup tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee found that the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed U-19 tour­na­ment had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per­cent of the play­ers be­ing be­tween the ages of 15 and 17. Ef­fec­tive­ly, as that plat­form is help­ing those old­er age groups, the next step would be to work with help­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the very im­por­tant U-15 age group.”

The NL­CL Com­mu­ni­ty Cup tour­na­ment, orig­i­nal­ly start­ed in 2019 for U-19 foot­ballers, has be­come one of the na­tion’s largest pri­vate char­i­ta­ble youth tour­na­ments with the strong as­sis­tance of a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. In­clu­sive of the new­ly added U-15 tour­na­ment, some 700 young foot­ballers will be able to ben­e­fit na­tion­wide from the youth de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­ing pro­vid­ed un­der the um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Rep­re­sent­ing Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe, Justin Lat­apy-George of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), and Patrice Charles, Deputy Di­rec­tor of Sports Di­vi­sion with­in the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, spoke on the im­por­tance of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships and fo­cus­ing on youth de­vel­op­ment as a way to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact com­mu­ni­ties, as well as en­rich the cal­i­bre of tal­ent avail­able to na­tion­al coach­es and the na­tion­al foot­ball sys­tem.

Match­es:

Sat­ur­day (March 25):

Venue: Ed­die Hart Rec. Grd, Tu­na­puna

Trend­set­ter Hawks vs FC Gin­ga, 2 pm

San­ta Rosa FC vs QPCC Youth Acad­e­my, 3.45 pm

Sun­day, March 26:

Venue: Beach Camp, Pa­lo Seco:

Cox Foot­ball Acad­e­my vs Point Fortin Youth Foot­ball Acad­e­my, 2 pm

Gas­par­il­lo Youths vs Moru­ga FC, 3.45 pm