HexagonalBlog

Harbour View wins Jamaican Premier League

Harbour View won their third Jamaican Premier League title after defeating Boys' Town 2-1 on Wednesday night.  That result, coupled with Tivoli Gardens' 2-1 loss at St. George SC, gives the Stars of the East a seven-point lead with two matches to play.  Harbour View have been the best organized and balanced side in Jamaican football this season, and overcame the loss of their best goalkeeper (Dwayne Miller) and striker (Lovel Palmer) to overseas clubs to pull away in the final stage.  The junior teams also had very good seasons as the U-15, U-17, and U-21 won their respective league titles.  It's a shame that they won't be appearing in CONCACAF competition anytime soon.

At the bottom of the table, outgoing champions Portmore United drew 0-0 with Arnett Gardens and Rivoli United beat August Town 3-2, which give Portmore and Rivoli a huge boost in their drive to maintain their Premier League status.

There's more reaction from the new champions at the Jamaica Gleaner website.

Haiti to play Argentina in May

So here's the second post related to Haitian football...Argentina's football federation has invited the Haitian national team to play a friendly match on 4 May.  The match would be held in the city of Cutral-Có, which is in Patagonian province of Neuquén (west central part of the country, about 1500 km from Buenos Aires).  I've driven through Cutral-Có once and thought it was a nice little town, but I never imagined that it would ever host an Argentina national team match.

In contrast to their appearance at the CONCACAF Gold Cup, this match will be a huge financial windfall for the FHF.  The AFA will pay for the Haitian national team's expenses and pay the team an appearance fee of US$15,000.  Haiti's taking the match seriously and doesn't want to just be a high-priced sparring partner, so they are scheduling a match against Martinique to prepare.

As a point of reference, the deadline for submitting a provisional squad list to FIFA is 12 May, and the deadline for the final squad list is 10 June.

Haitian Cup to restart Haitian football

There have been some news out of Haitian football in the past week, which will require a couple of posts.  Here is the first one.

The FHF has announced the return of the Haitian Cup (Coupe d'Haiti) as a bridge between the current football season and the next one.  The tournament starts 21 April with 32 teams from the top two divisions in eight groups of four.  The top two in each group advance to the knockout stage which concludes with the final on 6 June.  The prizes to the top finishing teams are considerable by Haitian standards, which leads me to think that Digicel and/or FIFA are providing the prize money.

Even in better years the Haitian Cup has been difficult to organize.  It was held intermittently between 1932 and 1962, and then just five times in subsequent years.  Clubs in the capital have been reluctant to participate in the competition; now, with infrastructure destroyed and stadia occupied by those made homeless by the earthquake, the motivation levels will be even lower.

Jamaican football federation enters death spiral

The news from Jamaica's football federation continues to be very grim.  Today the federation paid 850,000 Jamaican dollars -- the equivalent of £6300 or US$9600 -- in partial fulfillment of a judgment against the federation by a British court.  That ruling referred to unpaid fees by the JFF to a London-based management group that organized the national team's tour of England in 2006.  It got to the point that the repo truck was parked in front of the federation building and had selected the assets to be hauled away when the federation supplied the check.  The rest has to be paid in two weeks or the repossession crew will return, this time to finish what they started.

Those funds that the JFF used to pay off the management company were taken from the payroll funds for March.  Coincidentally, the federation announced that they were letting go of eight more personnel.  The headcount at the JFF is roughly a third of what it was a year ago, and none of them have been paid on time (the general secretary of the federation has yet to be paid this year).

Almost everything appears to be on hold in the federation.  No teams are representing the country in international competitions, preparations for the 2014 World Cup are halted.  However, the federation did pay the application fees to start construction at last on the first phase of their training facility at UWI-Mona.  (They're using FIFA Goal Project funds to build it.)

Two symptoms of Jamaican soccer's financial crisis

Over the last ten days there have been a couple of news articles from Jamaica that highlight the dire financial straits through which the national football programs are passing.  And I dare say that Jamaica's not the only Caribbean nation that finds itself in this situation.

The first news item was the suspension of women's football programs by the JFF.  This decision is the result of the Reggae Boyz' declining fortunes on the international football stage and the resulting inability of the national federation to make money from the team's appearances.  It's not surprising but very disappointing and short-sighted by the federation in my opinion.  That being said, there are few alternatives for the national federation to pursue.  It is difficult for the national government to provide funding for the national football federation even in the best of times, and local businesses have been hit hard by the global economic crisis.  Could we see a repeat of the days when Jamaica simply withdrew from the World Cup competition, like they did in the 1980s?

The second news item was the withdrawal of all Jamaican clubs from CFU and CONCACAF level competitions.  What jumped out at me, when I saw the figures that former PM Seaga stated were beyond the capability of the top Jamaican clubs, was just how much of a shoestring budget these Caribbean clubs are living on.  J$6 million at current rates is around US$65,000, and you can work out the equivalent values for J$2 million.  Jamaican clubs are hardly alone here, and the problem doesn't just exist at club level.  I read an interview with the president of the Haitian Football Federation who said that Haiti's appearance in the Gold Cup wiped out the federation's budget to the point that they couldn't play another match for months (this before the earthquake, obviously). 

I've made several posts at the level of disorganization and lack of interest in the CFU Champions Cup.  But when the clubs are competing for a larger tournament that is winner-take-all, with no financial award for participating (or even a trophy for clubs to remember!), why should any club be interested in it?  And why should a club that is subsisting on maybe US$10,000 per month be motivated to participate in a competition that will bankrupt them?  Just a modest appearance fee to the clubs would help them break even or even make a small profit from the competition.  Larger prizes -- not huge, but perhaps six figures in US dollars -- would help them make their payroll for years. 

One of the reasons that I am pressing for more prize money across all stages of these club competitions is not just to give the clubs extra motivation to participate.  The prizes also signal to the clubs and the general public that the confederation attaches value to the tournaments.  A prize-less CFU Club Championship is of little value to the clubs and the fans.  Judging from recent activities around the competition, it seems to mean little to the confederation as well.

CFU Club Championship -- Adventures in Improvisation

I had thought that this year's CFU club championship would keep the same format as last year, which was a combination of two-legged early rounds and single-match semifinals and final (and third-place game).  I had also hoped that there wouldn't be any cancellations and last minute changes to the competition. 

Those hopes were dashed when the CFU Congress not only changed the tournament format less than two weeks before the start, they also decided to add two Haitian league representatives as well as Elite FC from the Cayman Islands.  Things have quickly gone downhill from there.

First, Elite withdrew from the CFU championships without playing a match.  Then, Bath Estate (Dominica) withdrew because they couldn't fly into Guyana for its matches.  Then Guyana Defence Force couldn't travel into Puerto Rico because of problems with the immigration authorities, so the CFU moved the Guyanese club to another group so that now they won't have to leave their own country.  (But if Alpha United win on Tuesday, they'll face the same problem in the second round that GDF did in this one.)

So in the end we have two four-team groups, a three-team group, and one two-team playoff from which both sides will advance to the next round.  One group's matches concluded on 20 March, while the final group stage match will be played on Tuesday, ten days later.  The second phase starts with four three-team groups to be played between 13-17 April in Puerto Rico and Trinidad & Tobago.  I'm not sure CFU knows what will happen in the semifinal and final stages.

Last-minute additions, last-minute withdrawals, changing competition rules, and haphazard logistics.  It makes one wonder if the CFU is capable of organizing a drinking contest in a bar, much less a regional sporting event over a disparate region that is the Caribbean.  After several years of observation, the answer to both appears to be no.

Caribbean federations strapped for cash

It's not unusual, or even all that surprising, that many of the Caribbean football associations are experiencing various levels of financial difficulty.  The Caribbean nations have very limited natural and human resources and are especially susceptible to downturns and shocks in the global economy.  They are also vulnerable to natural disasters, as illustrated vividly in the case of Haiti.  Nevertheless it is alarming that the larger Caribbean federations such as Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago are in such poor financial condition that it might jeopardize their qualifying campaigns for Brazil 2014.

Latapy returns to coach T&T

Russell Latapy will remain as coach of the Trinidad & Tobago national team.  He has been offered a three-year contract by the federation, and will go to England to work alongside Arsene Wenger as part of an apprenticeship.

Latapy had faced criticism from some within the local football community who didn't feel that he had enough experience to coach on the international level.  That's just about true for the rest of the local coaches in Trinidad & Tobago, but with the team in transition it's not clear that they can hire an internationally known name.  At some point, the local coaches are going to have to be given a chance.

Damani Ralph makes a comeback

I had always wondered what had happened to Damani Ralph after his transfer from the Chicago Fire to Rubin Kazan.  I had known a little about his knee injury, but beyond that he seemed to have completely fallen off the map.  Michael Lewis helps fill in some of the details as Ralph attempts to resurrect his playing career with the Red Bulls. 

Damani Ralph was definitely one of the most exciting players to have appeared in Major League Soccer.   That partnership with Razov on the Chicago Fire teams in the mid-2000s, along with Beasley, Bocanegra, Armas, and others, helped form perhaps the best MLS side that did not win a league championship.

Caribbean club competition nears

Another edition of the CFU Club Champions' Cup kicks off in two weeks, with the top three progressing to the preliminary round of the 2010-11 CONCACAF Champions League.  To my great surprise, the competition format does not seem to have changed all that much.  There is a two-leg preliminary round, after which the five winners meet five other teams in the second round.  But has the format indeed changed?  With ten teams a straight knockout round is impossible, and a group competition becomes unwieldy. 

Here are the matchups for the preliminary round:

Avenues United (SVG) - CSD Barber (Neth. Antilles)
Leo Victor (Suriname) - Devonshire Cougars (Bermuda)
Hubentut Fortuna (Neth. Antilles) - Walking Boys Company (Suriname)
Bath Estate (Dominica) - Joe Public (T&T)
Guyana Defence Force - System 3 FC (SVG)

And the teams with byes to the second round:

Puerto Rico Islanders
River Plate (Puerto Rico)
San Juan Bayamón (Puerto Rico)
San Juan Jabloteh (T&T)
Alpha United (Guyana)

There are slightly more teams in this year's competition (15, vs. 14 last year) but from fewer countries.  And there are no entries from Haiti, Jamaica, or Cuba.  The absence of Haitian clubs is self-explanatory; with the human and material losses in Haiti after the earthquake it's doubtful that the Haitian champions can even field a team right now.  Cuban sides haven't played in Caribbean competition for a couple of years now.   After Portmore United withdrew from the CFU competition last year, no Jamaican sides are competing this year, and once again it's for lack of funds.  It is not reassuring to hear that about one of the largest Caribbean domestic leagues, but it's not completely unexpected in light of the global financial crisis. 

If the financial compensation for clubs in the CONCACAF Champions League is small -- aside from the winner -- it is almost nonexistent for sides in the CFU Champions Cup.  It's a situation that I don't see changing with the CFU until the economies of Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago improve.