Dear Ed­i­tor,

The an­nounce­ment of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween FI­FA and the Caribbean Foot­ball Union(CFU) on June 1, comes as a wel­come de­vel­op­ment. The re­port in the news­pa­per of some of the con­tents shows no­ble in­tent, as re­flect­ed in com­ments made by FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF Pres­i­dents as well as Ir­win LaRocque, the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of CARI­COM.

We in Trinidad and To­ba­go, need to be ap­pre­cia­tive of this ini­tia­tive as some of us were not too long ago, de­scrib­ing FI­FA as colo­nial, dic­ta­to­r­i­al, mur­der­ers (re­call “get your knees off our neck”) and vow­ing to bring FI­FA to their knees in­stead, even see­ing our­selves as an ex­am­ple of a fight­ing spir­it to the ben­e­fit of all small as­so­ci­a­tions world­wide.

One has to hope for ex­pres­sions of ap­pre­ci­a­tion in like man­ner. All par­ties re­port­ed in the news­pa­per re­ferred to the love of foot­ball in the re­gion and the place it holds in our so­ci­ety. We are the foot­ball-lov­ing Caribbean from Suri­name to the Ba­hamas.

The CFU, no doubt, had a role to play in this fi­nal prod­uct and will be ex­pect­ed to see the roll­out and im­ple­men­ta­tion. The in­tent to get in­volved from our pri­ma­ry school’s pro­gramme up shows as­pi­ra­tion to­wards the long-term, some­thing no­tably lack­ing in our plan­ning.

We re­call FI­FA’s ac­tion in Asia on the Child Labour cri­sis, where they went in­to coun­tries and got chil­dren in­to schools and out of fac­to­ries. The prob­lem of de­ple­tion of the ozone lay­er, saw them ban­ning sprays in the treat­ment of in­juries that were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the ozone. Like­wise, the man­dat­ed com­pul­so­ry use of shin­guards was in­tend­ed to pre­vent com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases on the field in a con­tact sport. We may add their con­cern for racism and ef­forts made in this de­spi­ca­ble prob­lem.

Oth­er key fo­cus ar­eas of the agree­ment in­clude mea­sures for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble adults in­volved in foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ties, the fight against match ma­nip­u­la­tion and the pro­mo­tion of sports in­tegri­ty and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“We are de­light­ed to en­ter in­to this agree­ment with the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, the aim of which is to lever­age our sport as a cat­a­lyst for so­cial de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion,” said In­fan­ti­no.

As an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al, FI­FA of­ten takes the lead and has a com­mend­able record of pro-ac­tiv­i­ty and rel­e­vance. This lat­est is on our doorsteps and we should en­sure that we du­ly ben­e­fit.

Lennox Sir­juesingh

Re­tired FI­FA Ref­er­ee and Prin­ci­pal

Ch­agua­nas.

sir­juesinghl@gmail.com