The Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, on Fri­day signed a four-year Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) aimed at strength­en­ing the con­nec­tion be­tween foot­ball de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion, re­search and pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the sport in­dus­try.

The agree­ment, which has been in de­vel­op­ment for al­most two years, es­tab­lish­es a for­mal frame­work for clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTFA and UWI, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the Fac­ul­ty of Sport and the De­part­ment of Sport Man­age­ment.

The part­ner­ship is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate greater links be­tween UWI’s aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes and the prac­ti­cal work be­ing car­ried out across TTFA’s na­tion­al teams, acad­e­mies, ad­min­is­tra­tion and wider foot­ball de­vel­op­ment struc­ture.

Un­der the MOU, both or­gan­i­sa­tions will col­lab­o­rate in sev­er­al ar­eas in­clud­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion, re­search, sports sci­ence, gov­er­nance, safe­guard­ing, ath­lete prepa­ra­tion and youth de­vel­op­ment.

The agree­ment will ex­tend across foot­ball, fut­sal and beach soc­cer, with an em­pha­sis on cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that can con­tribute to the long-term de­vel­op­ment of the game in T&T.

A key com­po­nent of the part­ner­ship will al­so be the cre­ation of prac­ti­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties for UWI stu­dents. Stu­dents will be able to ben­e­fit from in­tern­ships, practicums, re­search op­por­tu­ni­ties and match-day vol­un­teer­ing as­sign­ments with the TTFA, al­low­ing them to gain valu­able hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence while com­plet­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies.

The two or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­so ex­plor­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of an an­nu­al co-brand­ed UWI-TTFA Foot­ball Sym­po­sium, which would bring to­geth­er mem­bers of the aca­d­e­m­ic and foot­ball com­mu­ni­ties while pro­mot­ing dis­cus­sion, re­search and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties re­lat­ed to the sport.

Aza­ad Mo­hammed-Khan schol­ar­ship

An­oth­er im­por­tant fea­ture of the part­ner­ship is the es­tab­lish­ment of the Aza­ad Mo­hammed-Khan Schol­ar­ship, in ho­n­our of the late sport ad­min­is­tra­tor and his con­tri­bu­tion to foot­ball in T&T.

The schol­ar­ship is in­tend­ed to as­sist in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing to de­vel­op be­yond their in­volve­ment on the field and pur­sue fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reers with­in sport ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment.

Un­der the ini­tia­tive, one full schol­ar­ship or two par­tial schol­ar­ships may be award­ed an­nu­al­ly, where fea­si­ble, to par­tic­i­pants en­rolled in the UWI-FI­FA/CIES Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Sports Man­age­ment.

Re­cip­i­ents must sat­is­fy UWI’s schol­ar­ship el­i­gi­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments and com­plete the rel­e­vant se­lec­tion and in­ter­view process­es.

Both par­ties will seek to fa­cil­i­tate at least one schol­ar­ship dur­ing each pro­gramme cy­cle, sub­ject to avail­able re­sources and the nec­es­sary in­sti­tu­tion­al ap­provals.

Ex­ist­ing mem­bers of staff with­in the TTFA are grad­u­ates of the FI­FA/CIES Post Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Sport Man­age­ment, which was in­tro­duced at UWI, St Au­gus­tine in 2008.

Then FI­FA Pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter and UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor E Nigel Har­ris signed the of­fi­cial Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment to co­op­er­ate in sports re­search, train­ing, and ed­u­ca­tion. This was part of the TTFA’s 100th an­niver­sary in 2008. Ac­tu­al cours­es be­gan in 2010.

Speak­ing on the part­ner­ship, TTFA’s Yale An­toine said the agree­ment rep­re­sents an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­nect for­mal ed­u­ca­tion with the prac­ti­cal re­al­i­ties of work­ing in sport.

“Sport has been a qui­et ar­chi­tect of my life and the lives of many oth­ers, un­lock­ing doors and il­lu­mi­nat­ing path­ways I could nev­er have imag­ined walk­ing,” An­toine said.

“Through my own jour­ney in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion and op­er­a­tions, I have seen first­hand how es­sen­tial it is to bridge the gap in­to pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment.

“By equip­ping the next gen­er­a­tion with both prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and rig­or­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al frame­works, we en­sure that our lo­cal game is guid­ed by minds as sharp as the tal­ent we pro­duce.”

The four-year agree­ment rep­re­sents an­oth­er step to­wards strength­en­ing the pro­fes­sion­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al struc­tures sur­round­ing foot­ball in T&T.