Antigua & Barbuda stands to benefit from a recent visit by FIFA development officer for the CONCACAF Region, Daryl Warner, who spent two days in dialog with officials from the Antigua & Barbuda Football Association (ABFA) discussing the way forward for the twin island state.
Speaking with OBSERVER Sports, General Secretary of the ABFA, Gordon “Banks” Derrick revealed that the country could benefit from an additional four or five FIFA funded programmes but said he was not in a position to say what these programmes would be.
“The main reason he came to Antigua was to look at a couple things which include the various programmes FIFA has in line in terms of training programmes that he would like to see Antigua get involved in and some of the things that we have chosen such as the grass-root (youth) programme and a women’s programme just to name two,” Derrick said.
“There is a whole host of (other programmes) that we are now scheduling with him so we spent some time giving some tentative schedules and he will be getting back to us with them so that we would be able to, in the near future, give the dates of about four or five more training programmes that will be hosted here in Antigua,” he added.
Derrick said that the local FA will foot only the minor expenses where the hosting of these new programmes are concerned.
“These programmes are mostly funded by FIFA. FIFA pays for the instructors, the accommodations, the cost for the venues and things like that – that is part of the FIFA mandate so they do handle that type of stuff – it is just the minor expenses that are handled by the (local) association.”
Warner, who is the son of FIFA Vice-President and Trinidad football boss, Jack A Warner, also visited the site of the FIFA Goal Project, the “home for football,” during his July 21-23 visit and also had discussions with local officials as to the way forward where the start of the second phase of the same is concerned.
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