"By 2014, a team from the CFU must be in Brazil,," FIFA vice-president and Caribbean Football Union (CFU) president Jack Warner declared yesterday, referring to the Caribbean region's ambition to have a qualifier for the 2014 FIFA World Cup to be played in Brazil.
Warner's comments came at yesterday's Caribbean Football Union Congress in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where the CONCACAF Under-17 Boys' Championship is being contested.
He challenged the region to produce World Cup qualifiers at all levels.
"A team from the CFU must be at the next FIFA Under-20 Men's and Women's World Cup. As we now play to qualify, a team from the CFU must be at the Under-17 Men's World Cup in Mexico."
Warner's comments came just ahead of yesterday's CONCACAF Under-17 World Cup qualifier between Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, the Caribbean's main contenders for a spot in the Under-17 World Cup, which takes place in Mexico this summer.
Warner chided the region for not producing results. And he said the intention of this critique was to sober Caribbean countries into developing strategic mechanisms to produce results.
"In spite of the training courses, programmes and seminars funded by the FIFA and the CONCACAF, in spite of the FIFA grants received--each of you received over $1.3 million in the last four years--your teams still remain the whipping boys and girls of the CONCACAF Confederation and the message I am here to deliver today at this, the 34th Congress of the Caribbean Football Union, is let's shift the paradigm and bring glory to the CFU."
In 48 years Caribbean teams have won the CONCACAF Champions Cup--which has developed into the CONCACAF Champions League–just twice, the last being Trinidad and Tobago's Defence Force in 1985. And in the 20-year history of the CONCACAF Women's Championship, a team from the Caribbean Football Union has never placed in the top two.
Trinidad and Tobago are the best finishers so far, coming third at the 1991 CONCACAF Women's Gold Cup.