CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – Pres­i­dent of the St Lu­cia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, Lyn­don Coop­er is the new pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU).

He takes over the po­si­tion pre­vi­ous­ly held by Bar­ba­dos Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Randy Har­ris, who opt­ed not to seek re-elec­tion af­ter be­ing elect­ed to the FI­FA Coun­cil on Sat­ur­day.

Coop­er, who served as vice-pres­i­dent of the CFU Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for the past 13 years, was elect­ed af­ter run­ning un­op­posed at the CFU’s 48th Or­di­nary Con­gress at the Roy­al­ton Ho­tel on Sun­day.

The new­ly elect­ed vice-pres­i­dents in­clude Michael Rick­etts (Ja­maica), John Kr­ish­na­dath (Suri­name), Jean Dartron (Guade­loupe), and Ivan Rivera (Puer­to Ri­co).

The ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are Glen Eti­enne (Do­mini­ca), Anya James (Ba­hamas), Gir­don Con­nor (An­guil­la), and Mark Wade of Bermu­da.

Dur­ing his ac­cep­tance speech, Coop­er said he was com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing con­sen­sus among the CFU’s 31 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions and main­tain­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with FI­FA.

“We have and will con­tin­ue to en­hance the val­ue we pro­vide to our mem­bers through our ini­tia­tives and part­ner­ships with Con­ca­caf, FI­FA, and all stake­hold­ers.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it will de­fine my lead­er­ship, as we pool our re­sources in­stead of re­lin­quish­ing them,” Coop­er said.

He al­so em­pha­sised the need for uni­ty, chal­leng­ing mem­bers to lever­age foot­ball as a means to tran­scend cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers across the Eng­lish, Dutch, French, and Span­ish-speak­ing re­gions.

“As I take on this pres­i­den­cy, I urge every­one to use foot­ball as a means to unite, elim­i­nate ob­sta­cles to de­vel­op­ment, and fos­ter re­la­tion­ships and al­liances,” Coop­er fur­ther added.

Mean­while, Har­ris re­flect­ed on the tremen­dous strides that had been made dur­ing his time as CFU pres­i­dent, which be­gan in 2017.

“We pri­or­i­tized ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, and trans­paren­cy as our guid­ing prin­ci­ples, and we suc­ceed­ed in this en­deav­or.

“I take pride in our achieve­ments which have en­hanced both our rep­u­ta­tion and the ad­vance­ment of foot­ball in our re­gion,” the out­go­ing pres­i­dent said.

CMC