Min­is­ter of Sport Sham­fa Cud­joe was high in praise of Tiger Tanks Un­lim­it­ed for spon­sor­ing the Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 In­vi­ta­tion­al foot­ball tour­na­ment which kicked off last Sat­ur­day (April 2) in Mont­gomery, To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the tour­na­ment at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, the min­is­ter said: “It is so pleas­ing to see Tiger Tanks get­ting in­volved in our foot­ball at this time. I am very hap­py with what I am see­ing and this is great by the cor­po­rate body.”

Tiger Tanks is spend­ing over a mil­lion dol­lars in putting out this tour­na­ment for a to­tal of 15 teams. 10 teams are com­pet­ing in Trinidad and five in To­ba­go. The win­ners of the Trinidad seg­ment will meet the win­ners of the To­ba­go seg­ment in a home and away play­off to de­ter­mine the na­tion­al cham­pi­ons.

Cud­jo con­tin­ued: “These young ath­letes would have been away from the sport for the last two years and now this op­por­tu­ni­ty is sure to be wel­comed with both arms as they look to fur­ther their ca­reers and be­come great young adults. Thanks to Tiger Tanks and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor De­nis Lat­iff for be­liev­ing in the youths of the na­tion.”

Lat­iff in re­sponse said that the vi­sion of his com­pa­ny takes young peo­ple in­to ac­count. “We in­vest in young peo­ple and this is why when this op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self we de­cid­ed to jump on board. There is a gap in terms of de­vel­op­ment where we lose so many foot­ballers be­tween the Sec­ondary Schools League and the se­nior lev­el. So this tour­na­ment will fit in nice­ly and keep the play­ers in­volved so that their de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues. It’s a plat­form for them to show­case their wares in front of in­ter­na­tion­al scouts.

“The match­es here in To­ba­go will be broad­cast­ed by Rodeo Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and shown on Flow Sports, Tiger Sports and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms so that play­ers could be rec­og­nized. A few in­ter­na­tion­al scouts have reached out to me and they are will­ing to even come down and look at the play­ers, which is good for our foot­ball.”

The tour­na­ment con­tin­ues this week­end with an­oth­er dou­ble­head­er in To­ba­go and five match­es in Trinidad.