The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Gold Project in Jamaica has been renamed The UWI-JFF Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence in honour of the late football boss.

Professor Archibald McDonald, principal of The University of the West Indies (UWI), made the announcement yesterday at a press conference in the Council Room on the Senate Building at The UWI Mona Campus.

“Thank you for joining us as we mark the culmination of a unique agreement between The University of the West Indies and the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF). The establishment of this partnership in 2008 was created out of the recognisition that the development of the arena of sports in Jamaica deserved a much greater focus,” said Professor McDonald.

“As principal of The UWI I look forward to seeing the many benefits that this centre will bring for the advancement of Jamaica’s sporting industry. I want to thank all those who made this partnership possible, including former Principal Professor Gordon Shirley, and the late Captain Horace Burrell,” added Professor McDonald.

“I would like to thank the JFF for choosing the UWI Mona Campus as their partner in this initiative,” he said.

Football oficionados, including former technical director Brazilian Rene Simoes, CONCACAF Director of Competitions Horace Reid, Minister of Sports Olivia Grange, as well as Captain Burrell’s daughter Dr Tiphani Burrell-Piggott and son Romario Burrell, and granddaughter Zuri Piggott were in attendance.

Ironically, or planned, the unveiling of the display sign of the rebranded technical centre yesterday was on the ninth anniversary (June 26, 2008) that The UWI granted the JFF a 49-year lease to strengthen football development in Jamaica.

JFF Vice-President Garfield Sinclair noted that yesterday was a tough and bittersweet day for the football fraternity.

“We are here today to commemorate vision — that indelible but often illusive human characteristic sought by many but actually truly possessed by a precious few. Ambition when combined with vision, I believe, yields hugely transformational outcomes,” said Sinclair, also the JFF treasurer.

“The focus of today’s proceedings is yet another example of his boundless vision,” he added.

Three years after leading Jamaica to that historic qualification to the 1998 World Cup in France, Captain Burrell instigated and sought from FIFA, world football’s governing body, funds to start a Gold Project in 2001.

After multiple false starts and a presidential defeat at the polls in 2003, the Gold Project was earmarked for Malvern in St Elizabeth. But on his return to power four years later, in 2007, Burrell scrapped that idea and signed an agreement with The UWI in 2008 to accommodate the training facility.

In 2010, the technical centre was opened by then FIFA President Joseph Sepp Blatter on September 27. The initiative is the brainchild of Blatter and is being developed from annual subventions allocated to each of the 208 national federations affiliated with FIFA with grants of US$4 million.

The completion of the centre of excellence will comprise two fields, administrative block, changing room facilities, such as players’ dressing room, referees’ room, and a storage room for equipment. There is also meeting rooms, canteen, and dormitories to host at least 52 footballers.

“Captain Burrell’s legend as a truly great Jamaican has long been secured. This initiative expands his influence to international proportions.

“We the members of the JFF family and, indeed, all of football, and I believe all of Jamaica, only hope that his impact on the sport and every Jamaican life will eventually and possibly imminently be appropriately immoratalised,” added Sinclair.

“In his remarks during the opening ceremony in 2010 Captain Burrell said completion of Phase One ‘marks the beginning of a new era in our football development’ and a ‘dream come true’.”

Burrell died earlier this month in Florida after a battle with cancer, but his son Romario was on hand as he acknowledged all the praises laid upon his father.

“On behalf of the family, we would just like to say a humble thank you. The sport meant the world to my father; this country meant the world to my father,” said Romario Burrell, who then quoted the late American President John F Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Our father lived by that mantra,” he noted.