| dbo:abstract
|
- The Caribbean Professional Football League was a short-lived association football competition spanning several Caribbean nations. The aim of the competition was to introduce professional standard football to the Caribbean region. The participating teams were franchises created by local businessmen and the teams featured full international players. Players such as Theodore Whitmore and Rodney Jack participated in the competition. The league proved to be problematic and the Kingston Gleaner reported that it had made "significant losses" before the end of the inaugural competition. In June 1993, the Jamaican press reported that the CPFL had "toiled miserably in its second year and come under fire from competing teams who have incurred heavy financial losses brought on by inefficient organization". Christopher Ziadie, a player and director at the Kingston Lions franchise revealed that it had lost JMD $1.7m in two years and that in some cases less than 50 people would attend a game. Ziadie went on to describe the CPFL as a "shabby league" and blamed poor organisation. In some cases, matches were delayed on the date they were scheduled to be played. Harold Taylor, a competition organiser and the Caribbean Football Union secretary said that the problem with the competition is lack of promotion and as a result "no one cares" about it, he also said that he hadn't attended a game. Jack Warner claim in 2005, that the league folded because they "could not depend on the vagaries of the airlines in the region". In October 1994, the competition was re-branded as Caribbean Major League Football. Hopes were high for the competition and it was reported that the television rights to show the competition in USA and Canada for the competition were to be sold for $1.5m US dollars. CMLF Chairman Kelly Pierre also said that he was in talks with Asian and European businesses. Despite the reports, funding was short and The CFU and CMLF had a dispute over the organisation of competition. Warner announced that the CFU wanted to re-take control of the competition as he felt "the professional league is needed for the Caribbean's success in football". Warner also said that the CMLF had defaulted on several loans and owed the Caribbean Football Union $250k US dollars. The commissioner and Chief Executive of the league was New York-based Brazilian Jorge Campos, the owner of the St. Lucia based All Stars franchise. The Caribbean Major League Football company was registered in Barbados. The newly re-branded competition was delayed from March, to April, to May and delayed again to August 1995. The competition was set to be a sixteen-team championship but due to spiraling costs the format was changed. The sixteen teams were divided into two zones where teams could play up to three fixtures in a week at a host nation to keep travel costs down. The CFU President (and Simpaul Travel company owner) Jack Warner was unhappy with the arrangement. By August, four teams had pulled out of the competition leaving twelve teams remaining, the decision was made to split the teams into three groups of four. The competition never took place. (en)
|
| dbo:wikiPageID
| |
| dbo:wikiPageLength
|
- 19294 (xsd:nonNegativeInteger)
|
| dbo:wikiPageRevisionID
| |
| dbo:wikiPageWikiLink
| |
| dbp:abolished
| |
| dbp:align
| |
| dbp:founded
| |
| dbp:name
|
- Caribbean Professional Football League (en)
|
| dbp:quote
|
- [Expanding USL in] The Caribbean has made a lot of sense to us all along, and we go all the way back to 1995 when the Puerto Rico Islanders, in their first inception, first joined USL. As the Islanders became a force on and off the field, it became more and more sensible to start looking at the Caribbean as a whole because we recognize the region for its talent, but at the same time we also recognize they have challenges in terms of distances and their capabilities from island to island. (en)
|
| dbp:region
| |
| dbp:source
| |
| dbp:width
| |
| dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate
| |
| dcterms:subject
| |
| gold:hypernym
| |
| rdf:type
| |
| rdfs:comment
|
- The Caribbean Professional Football League was a short-lived association football competition spanning several Caribbean nations. The aim of the competition was to introduce professional standard football to the Caribbean region. The participating teams were franchises created by local businessmen and the teams featured full international players. Players such as Theodore Whitmore and Rodney Jack participated in the competition. The league proved to be problematic and the Kingston Gleaner reported that it had made "significant losses" before the end of the inaugural competition. (en)
|
| rdfs:label
|
- Caribbean Professional Football League (en)
|
| owl:sameAs
| |
| prov:wasDerivedFrom
| |
| foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf
| |
| is dbo:wikiPageRedirects
of | |
| is dbo:wikiPageWikiLink
of | |
| is foaf:primaryTopic
of | |
