Brent Sancho today announced the formation of a new football club, Central F.C., which will be applying to join the T&T Pro League for the 2012/13 season.
“We’ve been working on this for several months now and we now believe that we can satisfy the Pro League’s requirements to compete in this season’s competition” said Sancho.
The new club will be based in the Central region and hope to spread their presence across the area.
“Our offices will be in California and we are now finalising our plans to secure training facilities, which we hope will be in Chaguanas, as well as Point Lisas. We will play our home games at Ato Boldon stadium, but we are also hoping to play a few games at community fields in Central.” said Sancho, who will be the club’s Managing Director.
“The last few months have been stressful, but we’re now at the exciting stage” said Operations Director, Kevin Harrison, who worked at North East Stars with Sancho for two years. “This is much harder than the relaunch of North East Stars. At North East, Daryl Mahabir already had a strong foundation in place, with a good reputation and the club had an 8 year history. With Central F.C., we’re starting from scratch.”
Sancho, a former 2006 World Cup defender said “When we had finally secured the required funding there was a moment of jubilation, then we looked at each other and realized that we had no players, no staff, no uniforms and no equipment. We thought we had accomplished the hardest part, but we soon realized that we hadn’t”
“It was important to us that the name of the club reflected the area that we will represent” said Harrison, “So Central F.C. was the obvious choice. The shark logo was selected to represent the areas’ links to the sea, as well as the Trini delicacy, bake ‘n’ shark.”
“We will be officially applying for Pro League membership this week” said Sancho “We have already had interest from several local players and some from overseas and we will be inviting players for pre season training in the next few days. But, of course, we would welcome any other players who would be interested.”
Sancho said he has already selected a coach, but would not be revealing his identity until contracts were finalised. “We spent nearly four hours discussing coaching philosophy and our vision for the club and I believe he has the ability to achieve our ambitions.” Sancho said that although the club wants to win trophies, the focus must be on building a strong foundation and implementing a management and football style that will become the driving force of the club. “We want to emulate the days of the Liverpool F.C. boot room, where not only great footballers were developed, but also great coaches.”
Sancho said that the club’s Assistant Coach will be Kevin Jeffrey. “Jeffers fully understands our vision and is developing into a very promising coach. He has a great rapport with players and his passion for the game is infectious. We fully believe that working alongside the Head Coach, Jeffers will benefit immensely.”
Harrison said “Although we are confident that we have secured sufficient funding to satisfy the Pro League’s requirements, we are still approaching companies for sponsorship. We are planning an academy and, of course, we will be engaging in many community projects, with the first major event being Treat Her Like a Lady, which will raise funds for a woman’s charity. We will also be looking to partner with the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs and the Ministry of National Security on an anti crime project entitled Shoot Goals, Not Guns”
“We have been fortunate to witness first hand the fantastic work carried out by English football clubs working in the Kickz project, which has been proved to reduce crime by up to 39% in some areas. Kevin has many close links to people working in this project and we will be utilizing their experiences to help reduce crime in the Central region. We believe Shoot Goals Not Guns will really help to break down barriers between young people and the police”
“These are the kind of projects where we need local businesses to come on board, even if they don’t want to support football, but to make a change in their communities” added Harrison.
Sancho said the club will be holding a formal press conference once membership of the ProLeague has been confirmed. Anyone wishing to contact the club can do so by sending an email to kh.centralfc@gmail.com