Two weeks ago, we told you about the dismal performance of the Belize National Team at the 2014 Copa Centroamericana. There were high expectations that the team was going to perform much better this time around, given that they had placed fourth in this tournament in 2013.
But this time around, the Jaguars came in 7th out of 7, last place. Upon return, the players told us that their poor performance was foretold because the Football Federation of Belize did not call the entire team for preparation until a little over a month before, and the Head Coach, Leroy Sherrier, was not retained until 3 weeks before.
Everyone involved blamed the executives of the FFB for this foul-up, but the media didn't get a chance to speak with the President to hear his side. Well, he returned to the country on last week Friday, and we caught up with him on Saturday. Daniel Ortiz asked him to explain why the team was organized at the very last minute:
Ruperto Vicente, President FFB
"What may have effected the players is the players went into this tournament expecting the same performance they did in the last central american cup.
We have to understand going into these tournaments that we have to go in a lot more prepared mentally because we will not be looked upon as the
underdogs as before, so we have to prepare more. What I can say though, is that our team performed admirably and they performed better than they did
the last time around. According to the studies done that our team is the most improved team of the tournament. While Salvador came out as the youngest
national team, our team came out as the most improved team"
Daniel Ortiz
"
The problem still persists that other teams, other countries were in camps for 2 and a half months to 3 months and we only had, you're saying 6 weeks,
the players told us 3 weeks.
"
Ruperto Vicente
"It should have been 6 weeks because they were with Mr. Sherrier for 3 weeks and they were with the other coaches for 2 to 3 weeks. It was difficult
for the federation at this time to call in even the national team. We've had 5 national teams and it has cost the federation a whole lot, so we did not
have the funds to call this in 3 months before. It is difficult for the federation at this point to call in the A team. You know the A team cost us
problems more than any national team because we have to pay salaries to the players. Our players will not come into camp if we are not paying them and
that is a challenge for the federation. If we have the monies to bring these players in, we would keep them in camp for the entire year before any
tournament but the federation cannot. It does not have the money, but if we do have the money we will call in our players long before time."
So, if you listened carefully to the president, the main problem that the Federation has is financing issues. At the beginning of his tenure as leader of the FFB, he announced to the nation that the country's richest sporting federation was broke. In that conversation on Saturday, we asked him if that is still the case. Here is what he had to say on that topic:
Ruperto Vicente
"Our financial position is not going improve right now. We are still not in the position where we can we are over the hump, we're still at the bottom.
When we get over the hump we will be able to deal with all matters that concern football. But at this point, yes we have some money, but the money that
comes in from FIFA it is mostly for youth development. It is not to say, invest in a national team."
Daniel Ortiz
"When ever these failures happen on your watch as president, you explain to us we are learning from these experiences but hindsight is always 20/20.
When will we start to see measurable improvement in all of these failures that we've had? The next time we go out, we will see better performances, we
will see better results in terms of Belize performing at a higher level"
Ruperto Vicente
"It all boils down to finances. Once we have finances in place, our national team will perform a lot better and will be able to bring them into camp in
time and to prepare for a longer period of time for these tournaments. But at this time we have to come into camp no less than a month, month and a
half because that's all we can afford at this time. If the federation was a million dollar federation, certainly we would perform a lot better."
We should note that our information says that a persistent point of contention on the FFB Executive is the request for an audit of the Gold Cup funds, which reportedly ahs not been done.
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