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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Corneal: TTFA’s ‘Elite’ League only entry to CFU, CONCACAF tourneys

by

Nigel Simon
1079 days ago
20220721
Anton Corneal, former TTFA technical directors and national coach.

Anton Corneal, former TTFA technical directors and national coach.

An­ton Corneal, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has stressed that for lo­cal foot­ball clubs to com­pete in fu­ture Caribbean Foot­ball Union or CON­CA­CAF com­pe­ti­tions, they will need to be part of the “New Elite Foot­ball League” (NE­FL).

In 2018, both two-time win­ners W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral FC were the last clubs to rep­re­sent T&T at the CFU Club Cham­pi­onship, while a year lat­er North East Stars (2017 Pro League cham­pi­ons) and W Con­nec­tion (2017 Pro League run­ners-up), were not al­lowed to com­pete in the 2019 CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship as the as­so­ci­a­tion did not prop­er­ly ex­e­cute its club li­cens­ing pro­gramme.

Ear­li­er this month the T&TFA is­sued a press re­lease that stat­ed that it was in the process of es­tab­lish­ing a new top-flight lo­cal foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion “New Elite Foot­ball League” with a pro­posed start­ing date of late Sep­tem­ber 2022 or ear­ly Oc­to­ber for the next three years.

Dur­ing a one-on-one in­ter­view, Corneal ex­plained that T&TFA is seek­ing an in­vest­ment of $3.5 mil­lion per year from the T&T Gov­ern­ment for the next three years with the com­pe­ti­tion com­pris­ing ten to 12 clubs with each club re­ceiv­ing $250,000 for their op­er­a­tional cost dur­ing the eight months of the league.

In ad­di­tion, $500,000 each will go to­wards the ad­min­is­tra­tive costs of run­ning the league by the T&TFA and cov­er the ref­er­ee’s salaries and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es in ei­ther the TT Su­per League or an­oth­er sec­ond-tier league.

The low­er lev­els of zon­al foot­ball will be giv­en a fi­nan­cial pack­age of $150,000 with $50,000 geared to­wards Coach­ing Ed­u­ca­tion schol­ar­ships. How­ev­er, to com­pete in the league clubs are re­quired to pay $75,000.

Corneal, a for­mer na­tion­al Un­der-17, and Un­der-20 FI­FA World Cup coach as well as an as­sis­tant to Hol­land’s Leo Bee­hakker at the 2006 FI­FA World Cup in Ger­many, said, “We are do­ing this for the coun­try, it’s not for the T&TFA or to ben­e­fit the as­so­ci­a­tion, but it’s to make sure that we can pro­vide the game and a prop­er league and that mon­ey is turned right back in­to the run­ning the league.

He added, “Foot­ball is not be­ing played, and what has been played in the three leagues we have sup­port­ed (Tiger Tanks, Next Lev­el Un­der-20, and As­cen­sion Foot­ball League), have re­al­ly sup­port­ed the game, and now it’s our turn (T&TFA) to put a struc­ture in place and some of the ben­e­fits is it will pro­vide the chance to play in the Caribbean and CON­CA­CAF Club Cham­pi­onships, and you will have to play in that league. Be­cause we will like the play­ers to be ex­posed and that’s one of the faster ways to get the play­ers ex­posed. So again in the very near fu­ture, we will be able to tell the type of feed­back we get and reg­is­tra­tions from all the clubs.

Due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, pro­fes­sion­al league foot­ball was stopped in T&T in 2019, and apart from the three leagues men­tioned, no or­gan­ised com­pe­ti­tion has tak­en place even though the re­stric­tion on sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been lift­ed by the gov­ern­ment and Corneal was mind­ful of the im­por­tance of T&T not falling fur­ther be­hind.”

Corneal, a cer­ti­fied coach ed­u­ca­tor and Tech­ni­cal Ex­pert with FI­FA con­tin­ued, “We have lost two to three years with youth play­ers, years we can­not get back and de­vel­op­ment we can­not get back, and again all we can do is pret­ty much re­set, and get ready again, and make sure our pro­grams are up and run­ning, and when it comes to league foot­ball, there is noth­ing like the now, so if we can do this in as short as space a time as pos­si­ble it will be great.”

Corneal, who re­turned to the TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor for the third time re­vealed, “I re­alised that youth foot­ball is one of the ar­eas that we have blun­dered in the past.

“We don’t look at long-term de­vel­op­ment and we have looked at it in spurts some­times I be­lieve 15 years ago, and then there was an­oth­er time we looked at youth foot­ball and give it its due share and we need to do so right now and make sure that the de­vel­op­ment pro­grams are in place and they are sus­tained over a pe­ri­od of time, and in the long term it will help with the chang­ing of the lev­el of the game in eight to ten years.

“For a league, a meet­ing of in­ter­est­ed stake­hold­ers was held over the week­end. At the last meet­ing, every­one was ba­si­cal­ly on the same page and recog­nised the chal­lenges that we do have and we are just here to find our way.”

He said, “There is a need for the game to be played as our young play­ers need to ply their trade and I think we owe it to them as an as­so­ci­a­tion to pro­vide that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“The idea of a new league came about be­cause the oth­er leagues are not play­ing and we thought why not T&TFA with as­sis­tance to gov­erned the league gives some of the for­mer teams that are com­ing out of the Pro League and the Su­per League the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play.

“The way we did reg­is­tra­tion is to see the in­ter­est of teams in both leagues and that’s go­ing to give us a guide and whether it be pro­fes­sion­al if there is the fi­nan­cial sup­port be­hind it as there is a plan where we will look at what type of sup­port we get from the gov­ern­ment, cor­po­rate T&T and from T&TFA them­selves, and then we will come up with a plan on how well we can re­al­ly as­sist those teams.

With re­gards to the fi­nan­cial strain the league may come un­der, Corneal said he thinks the league’s gov­er­nance and op­er­a­tions would not cost any­thing ex­tra be­cause a lot those ad­min­is­tra­tive work will come out of T&TFA with per­sons that are al­ready hired, so there may not be an ad­di­tion­al cost.

We have to find clever ways of mak­ing this work and mak­ing sure that it is sus­tain­able be­cause we don’t want it go­ing to a sit­u­a­tion where we don’t have the sup­port af­ter two or three years, and then we are look­ing at a new league again.

Look­ing at the pos­si­ble struc­ture of the com­pe­ti­tion, Corneal said, “I think the struc­ture of the league will be sim­i­lar to what we had in the past (TT Pro League and Su­per League) with two tiers of foot­ball with ten or 12 teams in the top tier, and then the sec­ond tier of pos­si­ble 16 teams.

“But again that is go­ing to be guid­ed by the num­ber of teams that do reg­is­ter, and of course lets’ not for­get zon­al foot­ball as it’s so im­por­tant that we con­tin­ue with the zones as they are the ones that re­al­ly take care of the mass­es.

“The young play­ers get to play in zon­al teams and once they have ex­celled you will find that the pro­fes­sion­al teams and su­per league teams will start look­ing at them, so there needs to be a path­way, and we are hop­ing to cre­ate that path­way for young play­ers.

Not­ing that prop­er plan­ning has been tak­en in­to the set­ting up of the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter fail­ing to come to a so­lu­tion on a new league with the Pro League and Su­per League, Corneal then point­ed out, “We have been in dis­cus­sions with the Pro League and Su­per League I think for the past two years, and we have even had in­put from UE­FA, FI­FA, and CON­CA­CAF on pos­si­ble di­rec­tions, and one of the ar­eas that were very con­cern­ing to me is that we could not come to a head or we could not start a league, and I think that is a pri­or­i­ty.”


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