JAMAICA will host the 34th Caribbean Football Union (CFU) congress, president of the regional body Jack Warner told the Observer yesterday.

Warner, who is also a FIFA vice-president and president of CONCACAF, said the 30-member association of Caribbean football playing nations unanimously supported Jamaica as the next host.

“Jamaica will host this congress in February next year in Montego Bay and I am confident that Jamaica will do a good job in staging it,” said Warner from the Larry Gomes Stadium where he watched Jamaica’s Under-17 girls’ team play their Trinidadian peers as part of a four-nation series.

President of the Jamaica Football Federation, Captain Horace Burrell, who is also in Trinidad, was pleased that his colleagues approved the motion to grant Jamaica hosting rights after many years since the event was last held on the island.

“There was a huge applause from the membership when Jamaica was granted the hosting rights… and it’s fitting that Jamaica was chosen as we are one of, if not, the biggest footballing country in the region,” said Captain Burrell, who is senior vice-president of the CFU and close ally of Warner.

Warner, who chaired the CFU congress which ended in Port of Spain on Saturday, said a wide range of issues were addressed at the two days of meetings which included the upcoming Caribbean Club Championship and the Digicel Caribbean Cup.

The football strongman also laid out a plan that seeks to “cut expenses” for clubs and national teams in competition in the region. Instead of maintaining the route of home-and-away games in some cases, there will now be designated host countries as the CFU has found that travelling by air between the islands have been an expensive exercise.

“This will be less expensive and we will do all we can to assist the host countries with this new direction,” explained Warner, who is Trinidadian.

Also high on the agenda of Saturday’s congress, was the situation in Haiti, where the country’s football infrastructure took a battering from January’s deadly earthquake that killed more than 200,000.

In a comprehensive report to the meeting, president of the Haitian Football Federation, Dr Yves Jean Bart, gave horrific details of the tragedy which he claimed took the lives of at least 32 members of the football family.

“We have committed to rebuilding football in Haiti; they (football fraternity) have our support,” said Warner.

Meanwhile, Antigua and Barbuda, who were suspended from the CFU for the past two years, have been given observer status. Further to that, the congress has requested that president Warner visit the country to meet with the relevant parties with the aim of bringing closure to the matter of the country’s reinstatement to the body.

— Sean Williams