Reform Youth Football

The blog entry below is in response to the following Gleaner article "Time to come clean on National Under 17 Boyz" published on Thursday May 31, 2007 by Kwesi Mugisa.

Kwesi,

I very much agree with how things look from your corner on the above matter. I thought the present JFF administration would have been feeling some serious heat regarding the non-qualification of the U-17's for Korea. But as you say I guess this is Jamaica.
All I have heard from the JFF in the press is that it was a tough series of events and that they have put alot of time, effort and money into this particular group of U-17's and now that they have failed to qualify for the World Cup these fellows have to now take back what they have learned to their schools and communities and wait for their turn to play for the national senior team so that they can display the skills they learned. By doing the above or saying the above the JFF hopes that development of youth football will occur. That's nice! Very Nice!
I have something though I want to propose to you and may be we could talk about it. Why doesn't the JFF use the ISSA schoolboy competition as their 'youth development vehicle' and stop having all these clubs who are struggling financially and unable to properly care for their senior teams having youth teams as well. 'It jus' a murky up everything and mek the sufferation look bad!' I believe it is a waste of time to have schoolboy teams and club youth teams all running at the same time. We should follow the US model and not the British model. Also we should have the ISSA leagues being categorized into Division I, II etc. so that schools who want to focus on athlete development can do so and compete in higher divisions and those who want to focus on academics can also do sports but in lower divisions. This will allow for better development of superior player ( i.e. you should not find a great player on a weak team, weak programme and poor coach), greater interests and better rivalries and for sponsors who are important to get a greater bang for their buck. It will also allow the better ballers and those who want to do it as a career to go to schools serious about developing youths to be what they want to be and not what the schools want them to be. Why should a school tell a boy who wants to play professional ball to become a physicist instead or that if he wants to play ball he has to pass subjects he currently has no interest in or he has to leave school. What do they prefer have lots of thugs running around ot to have ballers earning money from what they do best. They will bus' the gun if they have nothing to do. The only thing easier is to play some ball. I don't want to flood you with too much just now. But if it all makes sense to you let us talk about it if you wish.