GFF appeals for support in “hectic” period

With three youth national teams preparing for and competing at the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) level and the senior women’s national team anticipating their CONCACAF W Qualifiers game in a matter of weeks, things are pretty hectic in Section K Campbellville at the Guyana Football Federation (GFF).
Earlier this week, the National U17 girls completed their campaign, while their male counterparts will begin their U17 quest later this week. Then, in a matter of weeks, both the U20 Boys and Lady Jags will spring into action.
As such, the GFF technical director explained how taxing such a busy schedule can be on the Federation’s personnel.
Joseph explained, “It’s crazy hectic right now. It’s a heavy burden on the GFF to be able to do three teams simultaneously. Normally, we’re able to budget and set up our cash flow in such a way that we can do these projects one after the other, but this time, obviously with the three teams being involved at the same time, it’s a really heavy burden, not only financially but also on our human resources.”
“We have our national coaches pool, which has about eight coaches, and then obviously we have coach Dooley here, and those are the coaches that are spread across those three teams. So, we have coaches that are doing double sessions on a daily basis, and it’s really stretching us.”
Even more concerning is the burden that these tournaments are placing on the GFF’s finances and allocations of such.

“But I think the real emphasis has to be on the amount of money that is required to prepare three teams at a time. So, right now, I think we’ve gone in excess of over $300,000 in getting these teams ready for participation, and that has come strictly from financing that is being provided through our operations cost. So, more than ever, we need all the support we can have to financially sustain that,” the GFF technical director noted.
He went on to share, “The difficult part of this is we’re only in the first month of the year, and we’re already a quarter of the way into the funds that we can expect from FIFA. So, we need as much support as possible to be able to execute the other programmes for the remainder of the year.”
Referencing the Women’s National Team’s game on February 27 at home, Joseph added, “So, we’re really struggling to be able to do all of this together, but we understand the importance of ensuring that the nation is represented at the international stage and that we afford our players the standard of competitions to grow and develop.”
Quizzed about the type of assistance that would ensure each team competes without worry, the TD admitted that both corporate and Government support would be welcomed by the Federation.
He reasoned, “I think we don’t have, or I’m not aware of, any corporate sponsors contributing to this phase of the preparation, so anything would be welcome, but I think bigger support that I would love to see happen is maybe the Government of Guyana coming on board to support this. I know Minister Ramson would’ve spoken about funding being available to national associations to help with their preparation and travel. Hopefully that can kick in as early as possible; maybe it’s too late for these three [youth] teams, but obviously, we have more international games that are coming later in the year.”
“What’s interesting is that between national teams, maybe just the senior national team alone, for them to do their allocation of games annually, that’s taking 60-70 per cent of our annual budget, so, without support, all of the other programmes now have to be done in a scaled-back manner.”
“So, we’d really love to have some partnerships, corporate and Government, to help support all of the programmes we have scheduled for the year,” Joseph concluded.