Heads should roll

Former national captain Terry Sealy is calling on national head coach Russell ‘Little Magician’ Latapy to do the decent thing and resign as head coach of the Barbados senior men’s team.

Sealy made the call for Latapy’s head during an interview with Barbados TODAY following Barbados’ worst ever defeat of 8-1 by Bermuda in the CONCACAF Gold Cup qualifiers played last Friday night in Fort Lauderdale.

“I think he should do the decent thing and save his career and move forward. All over the world that is the decent thing for any football coach to do. You have been given a chance to move the Barbados team forward and we have been knocked out of all the tournaments, why hang on?

“We have to make those strong decisions. I expect the executive of the Barbados Football Association would quietly meet with Latapy and ask him to resign. The president himself has to ask himself some questions,” Sealy said.

A former BFA council member, Sealy raised his hands as one of those who vouched for Latapy being named head coach of the Barbados team. It is a position the former Trinidad and Tobago midfielder has held for the past two years.

However, given the harsh reality that Barbados under Latapy’s tenure has not had any great success or qualified for any major tournaments, Sealy sees it as a great embarrassment and is calling for answers.

He is also willing to take matters further and call a no-confidence motion against the Randy Harris-led administration if that is what it will take for Barbados’ football to move forward.

“I will be doing a bit more investigation to find out some of the things that went wrong and if I am not happy, I would be calling and most likely moving forward to asking the president to step down or bring a no-confidence motion. This is a total embarrassment to Barbados football and from what I am hearing in terms of all the administrative problems we had, the president cannot continue.

“We need answers or the President will take the lead and step aside and let some new blood take over the running of Barbados football. Barbados football has not moved forward over the last ten years. All we have done is a lot of PR service,” Sealy stated.

Not satisfied with how Barbados football is being administered, Sealy said that the resources spent to retain Latapy’s services could be better spent on local coaches. He also warned that Barbados needed to pay special attention when it comes to rushing to bring in too many foreign players.

“I am one who said openly I supported the choice of Latapy as a coach. I played against him back in my early days. I have always liked him as a player and clearly what I am seeing here, Latapy has not been able to take control of the Barbados team and move our football forward.

“I am not happy at all with the overall running of our football. There are a lot of talks. We have not been able to put together a steady management at no time to work with our teams, you are always chopping and changing with the managers, the coaches. There is so much going on that it tells me there is no stability and it has to start at the top for us to move forward.

“For us to wait until 2022 to see what we do now in the next tournament, I think that we should be taking a fresh guard and allow some new people to come into play and move our football forward,” Sealy explained.

He added: “We had over the last seven, eight years, about two or three different technical directors. The national team had – I can’t even count the number of coaches that we had – but we have not in the last ten years been able to move forward in any actual competition.

“I strongly think that the head has to take that responsibility and realise it is time for us to take a new guard. Allow some new and fresh brain to come in and run the football. I strongly believe that those who have been there and knocking around for a very long time have run out of ideas,” Sealy added.

According to Sealy, one of the founding members at Pride of Gall Hill, if the local football community does not regain control of the sport, Barbados will be in a similar position as West Indies cricket over the last 25-years.

“The members have to come out and ask some questions. If we don’t take control of Barbados football, we are going to be in the same position as West Indies cricket over the last 25 years because we allow people who don’t have the football at heart to continue to run it.

“We need footballers to come out and start to take control of the football. Over the years I think we allowed people who don’t know about the running of the football to run our football. And I believe we have some people out there who would have benefitted through football who understand football to take the new direction of football in Barbados,” Sealy explained.

A former national defender, Sealy also questioned the selection of overseas-based players in the Barbados team. He suggested that Barbados should start by focusing on building a strong home-based team.

“We need to see some of these players playing in trial games and see how they gel with our local players. But we really should try to build out our team locally. I can understand any of those guys like Thierry Gale who came through our system coming back home to represent the team. But trying to just pick players from all over the world because they are connected one way or the other to Barbadian family is not the way to go,” Sealy said.

(morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb)