Con­ca­caf Pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani said the base has been set for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of foot­ball in T&T un­der new pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards and his ex­ec­u­tive team.

Mon­tagliani, in on­ly his sec­ond vis­it to lo­cal shores since his pres­ence at the open­ing of the "Home of Foot­ball" in Bal­main, Cou­va on No­vem­ber 18, 2019, un­der then T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTF) pres­i­dent David John-Williams who is now de­ceased, is mar­vel­ling at the work done by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in its short time at the helm of lo­cal foot­ball.

At the VIP Lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day, the Con­ca­caf boss told the me­dia, "Con­ca­caf has lived for the last eight years, since I have been pres­i­dent, on a phi­los­o­phy of foot­ball first. There is al­ways a lot of noise in foot­ball, and ob­vi­ous­ly, you have to deal with some of that, but foot­ball first is mak­ing every de­ci­sion in the best in­ter­est of foot­ball."

He not­ed fur­ther: "What I am hap­py to see is that Kieron has done that, in his short or­der as pres­i­dent and has led the or­gan­i­sa­tion. They've put their step for­ward in all facets of the game. Com­pe­ti­tions is the ob­vi­ous one, but club li­cens­ing, coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion with a con­ven­tion, and I think the base has been set for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of T&T to get back to what I know all of you think is your right­ful place to be ul­ti­mate­ly in the World Cup, and al­so to be one of the key play­ers in Con­ca­caf on the field.

"I think it's what every sin­gle fan in this coun­try wants. I know Kieron wants it, and I think it would be good for Con­ca­caf when those as­pi­ra­tions are there, and those as­pi­ra­tions are met. So, I am very pleased to not on­ly vis­it, but to come and give the un­con­di­tion­al sup­port to Kieron and his team and help in any way we can to push foot­ball for­ward for the TTFA."

Through Con­ca­caf and the sport's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA's on­go­ing part­ner­ship with Ed­wards and the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, the coun­try has be­come a case study for the Safe­guard­ing ini­tia­tive, where a new lev­el of care dur­ing the coach­ing of play­ers un­der the age of 18 years has been in­tro­duced.

Un­der Ed­wards and his ad­min­is­tra­tion, there has al­so been the in­tro­duc­tion of key pro­grammes to en­sure com­pli­ance with Con­ca­caf and FI­FA, beef up coach­es' ed­u­ca­tion and push for a prop­er pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball league.

Mon­tagliani, who was ex­pect­ed to at­tend a T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League's Tier 1 match on Sun­day, will al­so pay a vis­it to the "Home of Foot­ball" this morn­ing be­fore he wings out for a Con­ca­caf Con­gress in Paraguay with Ed­wards, told the me­dia that it was great to see the lo­cal foot­ball league back, the na­tionl team pro­gress­ing, al­though it faces some big match­es com­ing up, the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, and the work that has been done in such a short or­der by Kieron and his team.

Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts at­tend­ed the cour­tesy call on Mon­tagliani yes­ter­day but had to leave due to oth­er com­mit­ments when Mon­tagliani's flight was de­layed by more than an hour.

Ed­wards, the TTFA pres­i­dent, said the vis­it by the Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent was sig­nif­i­cant.

"To­day marks an im­por­tant day for T&T foot­ball as we have the pres­i­dent of the Con­ca­caf, Vic­tor Mon­tagliani, here with us, and it's im­por­tant in terms of the pro­gres­sion of what we've been do­ing over the last year as the new ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA to have vis­its like this. These cour­tesy calls are to show what we've been do­ing and to more so, show where we want to go. It is al­so to show the re­la­tion­ship we have with our par­ent body in terms of Con­ca­caf in the re­gion, it's im­por­tant," Ed­wards said.

Af­ter­wards, the two ex­changed gifts, with Ed­wards pre­sent­ing the Con­ca­caf boss with a So­ca War­riors repli­ca jer­sey, and Mon­tagliani hand­ing Ed­wards a scroll.