Pro league stays out of football dispute
It was to be a pivotal moment in the ongoing dispute between the Football Federation of Belize and the National Sports Council …that is the arrival of the General Secretary of CONCACAF Chuck Blazer. But tonight the only direction football is going is nowhere. According to the Belize Premier Football League, they were forced to walk away from the table at lunchtime after “mostly non-productive talks.”
Reynaldo Malik, Deputy Commissioner, B.P.F.L.
“What we felt they attempted to do this morning was to get the B.P.F.L. to put it in their own words, “present a unified front with the F.F.B., against the National Sports Council.” From that we came away with the meaning that what they wanted to do was gain the high ground by saying that the football family, meaning the B.P.F.L. and the F.F.B., are not fighting anymore so why does the government want to continue with its actions against the F.F.B. As we stated in our press release, we feel at the B.P.F.L. that this matter has gone beyond the B.P.F.L. and so we will not be drawn in as pawns now by CONCACAF, by UNCAF, or the F.F.B. in their struggles against the National Sports Council at this time. They have dug their own hole. They need to get out of the hole on their own, not with any help from the B.P.F.L. We for some eighteen months have been asking them to come to the table, to sit down, work out the differences with the B.P.F.L., and they have failed to do so and now they are reaping the fruits of their labour.”
Janelle Chanona
“Mr. Malik, has football in Belize gone to the dogs? Are we just bucking our heads against a brick wall here?”
Reynaldo Malik
“This morning it felt like we were hitting our heads against a brick wall, definitely for sure. It felt like we were playing a game. We sat there for almost two hours, at the end of the two hours, they said, do you need fifteen minutes to go outside and talk and formulate a list of your demands? And we said no, we don’t need fifteen minutes, we’ve been at this so long we have this stuff memorized; we can tell you right now. We started listing our demands to them and then they turn around and said we don’t have that in writing can you take fifteen minutes and go out and put it in writing and come back. This is like a game and we don’t have time to be playing games.”
Up to news time tonight, the CONCACAF representatives had yet to make contact with the National Sports Council to discuss a way forward.
