Dex­ter Skeene, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of T&T Pro League says the the Flow Youth Pro League is an en­vi­ron­ment where true de­vel­op­ment can take place among the na­tion's young foot­ballers.

Skeene, a for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er made this an­nounce­ment dur­ing the Flow Youth Pro League 2018 launch at the VIP Lounge of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, yes­ter­day.

Skeene ex­plained that there is a week gap be­tween the youth match­es where re­cov­ery of the play­ers can take place and most im­por­tant­ly coach­ing and prepa­ra­tion for the next week­end’s game.

He boast­ed, "This Flow Youth Pro League at­tracts the best tal­ent in the coun­try and is struc­tured in such a way to en­sure greater com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

This year's edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion which kicks off on Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 18, will for the first time, in­clude a knock-out com­pe­ti­tion with­in its 2018 cal­en­dar which runs un­til May 27 and will al­so in­volved in­creased tele­vi­sion cov­er­age by WIS­ports (Flow chan­nel 97) and height­ened so­cial me­dia in­volve­ment.

A com­bined 30 teams rep­re­sent­ing the ten T&T Pro League clubs (Cen­tral FC, Club San­do, De­fence Force FC, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, North East Stars, Point Fortin Civic, Po­lice FC, San Juan Jabloteh, St. Ann's Rangers and W Con­nec­tion), will com­pete across three di­vi­sions: Un­der-14, Un­der-16 and Un­der-18 every Sun­day from 10am, 2pm and 4pm re­spec­tive­ly.

The league for­mat, how­ev­er, has been trun­cat­ed to one round (Feb­ru­ary 18 – April 22) be­fore sec­ond phase of the sea­son (April 29 – May 27) fea­tures the in­au­gur­al knock-out.

Last sea­son, San Juan Jabloteh cap­tured the triple-triple, set­ting a new bench­mark by be­com­ing the first club to win all three di­vi­sions of the Flow Youth-League three years in a row.

Cindy-Ann Gatt, Di­rec­tor of Mar­ket­ing at Flow added, “This is one as­pect of my job that I love the most as through ini­tia­tives like this, we at Flow get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in and nur­ture young tal­ent.

“We are proud to con­tin­ue for an­oth­er year as we look for­ward to see­ing tal­ent­ed young play­ers touch­ing the ball. If it’s any­thing like last year, I am sure we are go­ing to have an­oth­er great sea­son, with our ver­sion of the in­ter­na­tion­al FA Cup – as spir­it­ed, de­ter­mined young play­ers give their all.

“While some may down cry the fu­ture of T&T foot­ball, I beg to dis­agree.

Based on what I have seen, we are far from fin­ished. At last year’s prize giv­ing event, I said the T&T foot­ball lega­cy is far from over. I main­tain that to be true. The fact we have 30 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing this year, shows that these young­sters have not let up and nei­ther have their coach­es.

“When Flow signed up to be­come a part­ner with the Youth Pro League we didn’t an­tic­i­pate just how re­ward­ing this would be.

As a part­ner, the Youth Pro League has el­e­vat­ed Flow not just from the per­spec­tive of brand vis­i­bil­i­ty, but the part­ner­ship has re­in­forced our pas­sion for sport and youth and the de­vel­op­ment of both ar­eas. We are al­so glad to be in­volved in a part­ner­ship which pro­motes the de­vel­op­ment of young men in sport.”

Gatt said sto­ries in me­dia are heart-break­ing es­pe­cial­ly as young men are in­volved in some of the dark­est of acts. She be­lieves the Youth Pro League is a safe place for our young men to learn about self-care, broth­er­hood, re­spect, team­work, strat­e­gy and peace. She said the re­al bat­tle should be on the foot­ball field. “A goal scored is a cel­e­bra­tion of per­sis­tence. A skate tack­le or a red card is a life les­son to learn. A game loss of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do bet­ter the next time.”