Caribbean nations set for breakaway

THE first move has been made towards a Caribbean football breakaway aimed at forming a seventh confederation so the region can fully recover from years of corruption.

Antigua’s Gordon Derrick, president of the Caribbean Football Union, was given the goahead after an executive committee summit in Miami to prepare the road map for the 31-strong CFU to split from North and Central America’s CONCACAF and become the Caribbean Football Confederation.

The blueprint is understood to have the support of 26 of the Caribbean territories who are fed up with being dictated to by the American and Canadian powerbrokers on CONCACAF and want the freedom to fund their own youth development. This includes setting up annual junior tournaments that had been blocked.

The CFU have been the main casualty of having three successive rogue CONCACAF presidents in Jack Warner, Jeffrey Webb and Alfredo Hawit, whose serial fraud charges include syphoning off TV rights money that could have transformed Caribbean football.

Derrick’s powerful address in Miami said a new way had to be found following years of oppression despite the CFU comprising 31 of CONCACAF’s 41 representatives. This secondclass status has led to Caribbean football achieving only a fraction of what it could do as a formidable independent force on FIFA.