By Iva Wharton
The current impasse between the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) and the Georgetown Football Association (GFA) is engaging the attention of the world governing body for football (FIFA).
That disclosure was made by acting GFF President, Frankly Wilson at the launching of the 23rd staging of the Kashif and Shanghai football tournament on Saturday at the Princess Hotel.
“The FIFA Legal Department has zoomed in on this. We just got some word from them last week. I myself, while I was in Zurich, met with a few of the lawyers from FIFA to explain the entire situation to them we sent up the relevant documents to them and they are currently studying the matter and will get back to us very shortly on the way forward,” Wilson told the press conference.
He added that while the rules remain the same, there are certain clear guidelines in the constitutions of the GFF, CFU, CONCACAF and FIFA as to how they proceed with certain matters.
“Persons went outside of those guidelines to deal with a particular matter or matters and that would have been the reason for us having the impasse.
“But we are not here to point fingers at anybody, we are hoping that good sense will prevail and even now, one year hence, we will sit down as mature people, conscious of the fact that whatever we do will have an impact on the future of the game and history will record it accordingly,” Wilson added.
Kashif Muhammad, in response to the question as to what was done by his organization to assist in bringing an end to the impasse said:”We made a couple of attempts in trying to arbitrate this whole matter but there are some parties who say `yes we will work.’”
He went on:”There was one time I had both the Guyana Football Federation and the Georgetown Football Association and there were discussions and everybody was willing to give it a try and then it all just broke down. People just stopped coming; people stopped being interested and we made an effort again and the same thing happened.”
According to Muhammad, he came to the realization that some of the officials who had attended the meetings had their own agendas and preferred to have the sport in the position it currently is in.
“But we just had to leave it because there was a point in time where the lawyers took control of the matter.”
Muhammad said he was confident that with FIFA’s involvement, the entire matter will be sorted out.
“We understand that football cannot continue like this. Guyana Football Federation is the ruling body for football in Guyana and we know that this situation will be regularized. So as soon as that happens we can see our tournament escalating back where all the teams can be there and it’s going to be more competitive. We will increase the teams and we will keep bugging the Guyana Football Federation to change our format because we want to change our format from a knock out tournament. We want to have if possible like twenty-four teams in the tournament and play groups and we meet to like the final sixteen now and then we go into the knockout stage which is pretty similar to the World Cup.”
In response to the same question Wilson said if he had it in his power he would have solved it yesterday.
“But the fact of the matter is within the jurisdiction of the courts in this country and we all know the kind of bugbear sometimes with the legal system, the matter is being called off, called off. I think we have tried as Kashif said but you know individuals created the situation and it should be solved by individuals. It would be foolish of me to say that any side is benefiting from what’s happening right now. Nobody is benefiting and it’s definitely hurting the game and it’s hurting our youngsters.”
Wilson said he hopes that the matter is sorted out pretty soon, so that football can be regularized once again.
The GFA took the GFF to court to regain its voting rights which were taken away by the GFF under Colin Klass.
