New challenges for football

The St Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation a an affiliate of FIFA is expected to effectively prepare itself to participate in all of the CFU, CONCACAF and FIFA competitions annually, if it is to maintain good relations with its parent body and continue to benefit from its developmental assistance.

Facilities

Local football is severely hampered in its development thrust by the inadequacy of the facilities available to it. Football does not possess its own field/stadium. To suggest that Arnos Vale is available to football is near mythical. The facility there is designed for cricket and is maintained precisely for that purpose. Football can in no way determine its own usage of the facility. It therefore means that football is still without a quality facility on which it can schedule the requisite preparation of players on an ongoing basis to keep pace with FIFA's programme.

Football has no consistent access to a gymnasium, sports medicine and accommodation for its various teams in training.

Equipment is in short supply.

Technical Personnel

St Vincent and the Grenadines has been the beneficiary of several courses aimed at training persons to be coaches in football. Courses have been held by FIFA itself under the FFA/Futuro programme as well as under the National Olympic Committee in tandem with Olympic Solidarity and FIFA. Scores of persons have been trained but few have taken the time to excel in this area of the sport. The competencies are nothing to shout about and this is reflected in the performances of various national representative teams. Perhaps we should point to the poor performances we witness at the club/team level in the nation to acknowledge that coaching excellence does not yet seem a viable option for many in the sport.