President of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Christopher Matthias yesterday shot down the claims of Rollin Tappin that the GFF prevented a Beach Football team from participating at the CONCACAF Qualifiers for the 2013 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.
According to Matthias, the Guyana Beach Football Association (GBFA) had approached the GFF seeking funding for the tournament scheduled for The Bahamas.
Matthias said that they had told the GBFA that they were unable to provide the $1.6m that the GBFA had requested to pay for the tickets for the players.
“When the GFF executive was told that the GBFA needed $1.6m to fund the trip to The Bahamas we told them we were unable to fund the team. At this point Tappin said that they were going to raise the money themselves and we said `no problem,’ and we signed off on that understanding,” Matthis told Stabroek Sport last night.
However yesterday, Tappin attempted to blame the GFF for the team’s inability to attend the championships.
Speaking to Stabroek Sport via telephone Tappin said: “Beach football has been executed at point blank range by the Matthias-led GFF. They have an obligation and yet they deny the team the opportunity which is wrong,” said Tappin who was, according to him, the assistant coach/manager of the team.
Tappin posited that the systematic development of the beach football has been occurring albeit with limited resources and that competing at the World Cup Qualifier would have given the sport further impetus going forward.
He added that influential persons such as Presidential Advisor on Empowerment Odinga Lumumba, Kashif and Shanghai Co-Director Aubrey Major and Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport Alfred King had pledged assistance to the team in the form of airline tickets and that accommodation and meals would have been provided by the tournament organisers.
He agreed, though, that from the inception, the GFF had indicated its inability to fund the venture.
“From the outset the GFF said that they didn’t have funds and we said we would try and generate our own funding. Currently we would have received $400,000 and all the necessary tax exemptions from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and was promised assistance by other individuals,” added Tappin.
Tappin also wanted Connections Travel Services to credit them the ticket with the GFF’s approval but the GFF balked.
“I wrote the President (Matthias) on Saturday evening and copied it to the General Secretary stating I will be the guarantor for the issuance of the tickets for the team to travel. Since then no response or acknowledgement has been forthcoming,” he added.
Matthias said that Tappin was not being entirely honest.
He said that after initially requesting the sum of $1.6 million for the payment of the airline tickets, Tappin subsequently said that the amount was around $3.23m which further escalated to $3.7m on Saturday.
The CONCACAF leg of the World Cup qualifiers will commence today at the new Malcolm Park Beach Soccer and Futsal Facility, in Nassau.
The Guyana team was expected to leave yesterday.
This will also be the first time that the qualifiers have been held in the Caribbean. The two finalists of the championship will be the nations who will qualify for the World Cup and go on to represent the region in Papeete, Tahiti in September of this year.
