ABFA Membership Increased, Six New Clubs Accepted

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\Six new clubs were accepted into the membership of the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association (ABFA) when the body held its ordinary congress at the Multipurpose & Exhibition Cultural Centre on Tuesday night.

Green City FC, Generation Next, North Coast FC, Belmont FC, FC Master Ballers and Earthquake FC all received the nod from the majority of the association’s membership gathered at the Perry Bay venue.

This brings the ABFA’s total membership to 62 with 10 clubs in the Premier Division, 12 in the First Division and 40 in the Second Division.

President of the ABFA and former national striker, Everton “Batow” Gonsalves, said the clubs met all of the FA’s requirements but reminded they were not required to meet the standards set out in the CONCACAF clubs license.

“These are entrants into the Second Division and the requirements at the Second Division are significantly relaxed where much of the strenuous constraints of the CONCACAF C License are relaxed and that is by agreement with us and CONCACAF so the First Division and the Premier Division have the bulk of the serious matters when it comes to CONCACAF licenses,” he said.

One founding member of the Earthquake FC and former national player, Arnold “Keegan” James, explained their reasons for breaking away from the Fort Road FC.

“We have too many players and there is also a lot of politics in that senior team that I really don’t wish to talk about but we had a discussion many years ago and said we need to have something structured where you have the youths branching off from the academy into the senior team and that was met with a little controversy. After that we started the youth club which paid off tremendously and the youths are now outgrowing the academy and want to play,” he said.

The 2018/19 domestic football season is slated to kick off later this month with the President’s Cup while the league competitions will start next month.