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Tue, Mar

Sports Ministry gives $.4M to U-20 campaign.
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As T&T's Un­der-20 na­tion­al foot­ball team pre­pares to face Suri­name to­day and the US Vir­gin Is­lands on Fri­day to close off the group phase of the CON­CA­CAF Un­der-20 Men Cham­pi­onship World Cup qual­i­fi­er in the Unit­ed States, the Min­istry of Sport & Youth Af­fairs pre­sent­ed a cheque val­ued TT$452,855.00 to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to cov­er ex­pens­es for the tour­na­ment.

T&T played the USA in its third match on Mon­day night and was de­feat­ed 6-1.

The Ho­n­ourable Sham­fa Cud­joe, in her re­marks be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion, ex­tend­ed best wish­es to the team and took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­it­er­ate that NG­Bs must be more cir­cum­spect in their fund­ing re­quests. Min­is­ter Cud­joe said, “The Min­istry and SporTT stand ready to pro­vide the nec­es­sary as­sis­tance when called up­on but NG­Bs al­so have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to prac­tice trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and even democ­ra­cy in their own af­fairs. Plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion are fun­da­men­tal to the process of sports de­vel­op­ment and we look for­ward to im­prove­ment in these ar­eas go­ing for­ward.”

Both Di­rec­tor Hay­den Mitchell of the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) and the Min­istry’s Di­rec­tor of Sports Patrice Charles con­curred with the Min­is­ter’s con­cerns about the time­li­ness of for­mal re­quests for fund­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in to­day’s chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

To date, T&T has won two of the Group A match­es at the tour­na­ment which be­gan on 1 No­vem­ber. T&T came from be­hind to beat St Vin­cent and the Grenadines 3-2 and romped to a 5-1 vic­to­ry against Puer­to Ri­co but lost to the USA 6-1 on Mon­day night. The next for T&T is Suri­name. The top two teams of each group would qual­i­fy for the 2019 FI­FA U20 World Cup.