Verdes opts out of B.P.F.L.
In sporting news, the Belize Premier Football League has taken a hit with the abrupt departure of one of its eight teams in the middle of the season. Hankook Verdes is pulling itself out of B.P.F.L. play due to what it calls biased behaviour by league executives as well as the officials on the field. According to a release from the football club, their opponents last Sunday, Kulture Yabra of Belize City, arrived at the stadium in San Ignacio late, after being delayed by a police search on the Western Highway and then took an additional hour to take the field. Verdes owner Erwin Contreras contends that game officials also arrived late as well as unprepared and were also biased in their calls in favour of Yabra. Verdes calls the behaviour totally unprofessional and unacceptable and demands that the B.P.F.L. either replay the game or award Hankook Verdes the victory and three points. If not, they’ll leave the league. And that’s just they ended up doing as the B.P.F.L. Executive has decided that in the end, it is the game officials who make the decisions on the field.
Maito Perdomo, Commissioner, B.P.F.L.
"This is a new owner of the Verdes team, this is the first time this guy has ever been in football and I don’t know if he had some other agenda, I couldn’t say. But it really caught us by surprise. I don’t know what his agenda is, but what I’ve been hearing is that he’s been calling all the other owners trying to get them to side with him."
Janelle Chanona
"What is the bottom line issue here, just that the game started late?"
Maito Perdomo
"Well, as everybody knows, the Yabra club was held up at a road block and I think they were held up for over forty-five minutes. Then the players left, walking, some walked, some hitchhiked to the game. After that, when they got to the stadium, the officials?I was contacted about it?and I told them that the officials there, the centre referee and the match commissioner, they had the right to decide when the game would play or if they would postpone the match. Apparently there was like over five hundred people at the match, and I don’t think the Verdes management wanted to deal with that, to tell them that the match would be postponed, so the officials decided to play the match an hour late. And the match was played; Verdes lost 5-2. At the half, the Verdes management protest the game, our executive met on Tuesday, we looked at the whole situation and we decided that the results of the game stand because the officials made the decision within their rights."
While the Hankook Verdes football club does have an opportunity to return to the league, Perdomo says based on correspondence between the B.P.F.L. and the team, the matter is apparently a done deal. That means that Verdes team players are now free agents. The B.P.F.L. has extended the final roster deadline by a week so you just might see your favourite Verdes player in the line-up on one of the other seven teams.
