GFF, DFA officially ink MoU
By Jemima Holmes
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Guyana Football Federation and the Denmark Football Association is expected to not only create a relationship between the two but assist in Guyana’s quest to participate in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
GFF and DFA Presidents Wayne Forde and Jesper Moller sign the Memorandum of Understanding
The MoU between the two football associations was first revealed back in June, when the Guyana Football Federation President Wayne Forde made the disclosure while highlighting some areas that the Memorandum would cover.
Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon at the Pegasus Hotel, the ink was finally applied to paper, marking the beginning of Guyana’s quest towards the FIFA 2026 World Cup.
However, the MoU will take under its wing many branches of Guyana’s football, ensuring that the sport is adequately developed over the coming years.
“Today we’re able to establish the terms of our collaborative efforts in the coming years for the implementation of some of the key strategic objectives and programmes. The objectives of our collaboration are in the areas of coaching education, infrastructure development, competition management and professional football league development, women’s and grassroots football, youth football development, referees development, governance and administration,” Forde disclosed.
Furthermore, the GFF President went on to break down the particulars of the projects that will be undertaken.
“Coaching education will certainly develop the quality of players that we develop over the next couple of years. Infrastructure development, there’s several infrastructural projects that we want to work on. Women’s football, we’re nowhere close to where we need to be so we will collaborate to implement some strategies. Youth development, referee development we’ve found very challenging in recent times so we’ll try to establish an elite referees programme and the overall governance and administration of the game can do with some further improvements,” Forde explained.
At the head table were CONCACAF’s Senior Project Officer Howard Mc Intosh, GFF President Wayne Forde, DFA President Jesper Moller and UEFA’s Head of International Affairs Ava Pasquier
On the other side of the MoU was Danish Football President Jesper Moller, who was happy about finally being able to make the partnership official. When probed about the timeline in which Guyanese can begin to see the fruits of the agreement and what Denmark can take away from the partnership, Moller had this to say:
“If I sign an agreement like this, in one or two years the Danish media will ask me what happened? Did you execute? Or was it some speeches and then a signing. So I have to deliver, that’s very important for me,” he stated.
“Football is developing and that’s why we are trying to go far away to learn. As I told you, we are trying to learn the academy structure because we don’t have that in Denmark. And besides grassroots and women’s football, we would like to prepare for our participation for the World Cup in ‘26 in this climate, the heat. So we have a lot of things to learn and that why we’re doing this with the help of UEFA assist,” Moller went on to disclose.
Meanwhile, the MoU also received the blessing of CONCACAF, through Senior Project Officer Howard Mc Intosh who revealed that the body is happy with the progress that Guyana’s football is making.
“The GFF has demonstrated a level of leadership. We at CONCACAF are very comfortable and very happy with what we see happening with football in Guyana. The leadership, the necessary governance, the level of administration that is taking place and of course you see it on the field kike what happened with the Gold Cup. And we’re here to pledge our continued support,” Mc Intosh expressed.
