Bobby Fernandes says don't compare national football teams
- lauds GFF for national team's preparation
By Donald Duff
Stabroek News
December 9, 2006
Former national footballer and president of the Georgetown Football Club (GFC) Bobby Fernandes has lauded the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) for the preparation of the national football team which has qualified for the finals of the Digicel Caribbean Cup football tournament from January 12-23 in Trinidad next year.
The `Golden Jaguars' as they are being called by patriotic fans have won both preliminary groups of the competition on their way to being hailed by International Football Federation's (FIFA) Vice-President Austin `Jack" Warner as the success story so far of the Digicel Cup.
Fernandes, like Warner, is excited about the national team's showing and he felt that their performance of winning every match they have played so far was because of their preparation, the fact that some players are playing semi-professional football and the encampment of the team.
Fernandes said the fact that some of the players are considered professionals is another difference between players of the olden days and those of the present.
"Half our national team is playing semi-pro football in Trinidad now and this is a blessing because they will be accustomed to high-level competition on a daily basis and there is no substitute for that," Fernandes said.
Fernandes said because his association with football stretches over 40 years he had been bombarded by requests from people to compare this present team with teams of the past.
"A lot of people ask me to compare the present winning team to teams of the past.
"It's natural in sports to compare old champions with the new. In the case of football I think it's not entirely fair because the facilities and the programmes that our national team has now, previous teams never had.
"So maybe we should look at the Guyana Football Association (GFA) of long ago."
Fernandes said the GFA of yesteryear was a volunteer association which was really strapped for funds.
"They had no other means of getting funds other than the gates," he disclosed.
"The gates were not enough. As anyone knows now, you can't run football from the gates. So the funding was not there in days gone by and this was very, very important for preparing a team as you know."
Fernandes said the GFF should be given every credit for what it had done in preparing the present team.
"To me they have got it right and they have spent the money they have got from FIFA, some of it anyway, on what it is meant to do and that is develop football in Guyana."
Insularity in clubs
"Long ago we were never given the facility of being encamped in any form and this is important because it develops team spirit. And one of the things in our day that hampered national football was the insularity of clubs, "said Fernandes, who played his first first-division match in 1965.
"The national teams in those days were made up of a group of players from the better clubs. So you had four to five players from Sandbach Parker, four to five players from Santos.... Thomas United was a big club in those days and these players were in cliques. So when they went into a national side they only passed to their club players because you wanted your club players to shine and this of course was a recipe for disaster," he explained.
Fernandes said around 40 players were called to trials in those days sometimes maybe two or three weeks before a foreign team came to play.
There was no encampment but a series of trial matches were held for the 40 players.
"So this encampment has solved that problem because everybody gets to know everybody; you get to build friendships between the players and your team spirit is excellent," he said of the present system of encamping teams prior to tournaments.
"The other thing is being able to afford tours to foreign countries. In the six years I played for Guyana the national team must have gone abroad twice, once to Suriname and we came back the next day and once to Cayenne for a little longer but this thing of going and playing friendly international matches that is what a national side needs.
"You need exposure, you need to train and then you need to try it out by going on these tours. You need to be accustomed to playing on foreign soil where you don't have home ground advantage," Fernandes said adding: "So I want to congratulate Mr. Klass and his organization for spending money for this present team to get this exposure which was very important."