Courtesy: Trinidad Express.com

HCU pour $200,000 into Caribbean Futsal

By IAN PRESCOTT

Sunday, March 14th 2004

T&T will host the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Futsal qualifying tournament from March 18-23 at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya.

The tournament will cater for eight teams which will compete in two groups.

Hosts Trinidad and Tobago are in Group A alongside Grenada, Puerto Rico and the Netherlands Antilles, while Suriname, Guyana, the Turks & Caicos and St Vincent and the Grenadines contest Group B.

The top two teams will qualify for the CONCACAF qualifying tournament which takes place in Costa Rica. Out of that tournament, the top two finishers will go on to compete in the World Futsal Championships in Taiwan in November.

And at a media launch last Friday at the Hindu Credit Union's administrative offices in Edinburgh, Chaguanas, it was announced that the local financial organisation will sponsor the Caribbean tournament to the tune of $200,000.

HCU officials also took the opportunity to announce the launch of a money transfer service between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States and has aptly dubbed the Caribbean tournament as the HCU Money Express Caribbean Futsal Qualifying Tournament.

Giving the feature address at the launch was Jack Warner, president of both the Caribbean Football Union and CONCACAF and a vice-president of FIFA, governing body for world football.

Also among those present were the CFU's Jamaican vice-president Horace Burrell; Oliver Camps, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation president; and HCU officials Gawtam Ramnanan (managing director), Carl Ramdeo (corporate director advertising/promotions), Ashvani Mahabir (corporate secretary) and Sunil Ramdeen (general manager HCU television).

While celebrating the partnership between football and the HCU, Keith Look Loy, CONCACAF's development officer, described Futsal as five-a-side football with very specific rules.

"This game reaches into the communities to people who are outside the boundaries of what is considered normal football," said Look Loy, who congratuled the credit union for its role in social development.

Warner lauded HCU as the first-ever sponsors of a Caribbean Futsal tournament and further announced the HCU had also pledged up to $2 million worth in "contractual benefits" during the Futsal tournament and also during the 2006 World Cup qualifying tournament.