Fran­cis Joseph

Still trau­ma­tised by the 7.0 earth­quake which claimed more than 200,000 lives in that coun­try on Jan­u­ary 12, the Hait­ian Women's Un­der-17 team, has picked it­self up and is ready for in­ter­na­tion­al bat­tle again, seek­ing to make it to the Fi­fa World Cups fi­nals in Trinidad in Sep­tem­ber. The Un­der-17 play­ers are all safe and be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed in neigh­bour­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. None of the Hait­ian play­ers, men and women, died in the earth­quake, but the foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors were not so lucky. Thir­ty-two of them, one be­ing the Un­der-17 coach, Jean-Yves Labaze, died when the three-storey Haiti Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion build­ing col­lapsed.

The Un­der-17 team, now prepar­ing for the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 fi­nals, will go in­to bat­tle with­out their coach. The team is be­ing tak­en care of in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, but Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, Jack Warn­er, in­di­cat­ed on Sun­day dur­ing a vis­it to Port-au-Prince, that he would take care of all the ex­pens­es for the Hait­ian women foot­ballers. The Hait­ian women will open the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 tour­na­ment against the Unit­ed States on March 10 in Cos­ta Ri­ca. This is the first time Haiti has qual­i­fied for the Con­ca­caf fi­nals of a women's youth event since the 2002 Un­der-19 tour­na­ment.

Warn­er, who is al­so pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf, stat­ed, "Haiti's par­tic­i­pa­tion in this tour­na­ment un­der the most dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances is a tes­ta­ment to the will and com­mit­ment of the Hait­ian Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion, their play­ers and coach­es and the Hait­ian peo­ple. We ap­plaud their per­se­ver­ance and look for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er to re­build their foot­ball pro­gram and coun­try." The Con­ca­caf event will qual­i­fy two teams, along with Un­der-17 Women's World Cup host, T&T, for the world cham­pi­onship in Sep­tem­ber. Dur­ing his vis­it to Haiti, Warn­er pledged as­sis­tance to the Haiti foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty, of­fer­ing to re­build their head­quar­ters which col­lapsed dur­ing the earth­quake.