The fruits?of?the two major out-of-season football tournaments continue to be sweet and I am still hopeful that one day we can have a professional league in Barbados.
Once again credit must go to the organizers of both competitions for giving us a glimpse of what our real target must be if local football is to reach its ultimate destination.
There is a promised land and footballers should be able to put foot on it and reap some of the sweets.
The small element of professionalism we are now seeing vis-a-vis stipends and lucrative prize money by our standards, is very commendable but we must strive to implement a system that can expand what we have with the aim of providing full time employment for the best players and other resource personnel including administrators, managers and coaches.
While the current tournaments try to institute certain values in the players it could be counter productive when they are finished that they then return to the same old club environment and the same old habits once the regular Barbados Football Association season is in play.
In other words, it doesn’t make sense to be thinking like a professional for eight weeks and behave like an amateur for the rest of the year.
We must have a standard that seeks to bring the best out of our players all the time in terms of attitude and performance.
We have footballers with the qualities that deserve a chance to go to the next level but they would be reliant on others who can put the infrastructure in place to make it a reality.
The process should be guided by the BFA which has been in existence for more than 100 years and they can seek to partner with investors much in the same way that some out of season organizers do.
Mind you, what I am proposing cannot happen in a day or even a year because the first thing we will have to change is the mindset which may still be stuck in the middle ages and refuse to envisage anything that’s progressive and beneficial to the masses.
Once we get past that hurdle, we can start to deal with the fundamentals on the formula for the league. Will we use the current out-of-season model of combined squads or will we go with the established clubs that play at the top level of football?
How many teams will be involved initiallly? How often will matches be played and more importantly will revenue streams be sustained to make it viable for all concerned?
We know that everybody that makes an investment wants to see a profit once the projected teething phase has been reached. It is possible that those profits can be realized through the sale of consumer goods and services by companies, who are willing to sponsor teams and take the risk on a project that can bring holistic benefits to the society.
Truth be told, the level of profit they anticipate might very well be decided on the overall state of the economy, employment opportunities and having the spending power to shop in the market place.
So, yes, I am taking into account that there are several variables that must be considered before venturing into to a full-fledged professional league but this approach is not dissimiliar to normal investment in other businesses.
As a layman, my main concern is about the advancement of the social capital because football has its own niche which can be developed to the point where young men can have an opportunity for full employment.
It will provide the chance to reduce some of the negative brands that have been associated with the sport over the years. Realistically, football is still regarded as primarily a working class sport with an especially strong attraction for people from the inner cities or as we like to say in Barbados, boys on the block.
Whether research supports it or not, there’s a standard view that footballers are locked in with many of the social ills across the country. If this is so, they are not the only guilty ones but perception and not facts as we know, very often creates reservations in the minds of people who might be willing to make a difference in the lives of others.
Even so, who needs the doctor? If we feel so strongly about certain issues we should be willing to lend a helping hand lest we become victims of a sore that could fester to the detriment of the country’s social fabric. This is not even an option I think we should be contemplating.
Apart from that, we have reached the stage in our national development where we have to explore non-traditional avenues for creating employment for our youth. The job market is congested with thousands of people having the same qualifications so inevitably the majority will be disappointed and become a burden to their households and by extension society.
Sports is an option. Football is a medium that can help to reduce the unemployment numbers but yet this approach could be a hard sell for those who continue to see sports as merely recreational.
We can only have a professional football league if we change our thinking.
• Andi Thornhill is an experienced award-winning freelance sports journalist.
