TCI Has Numerous Talented Football Players, Says TCIFA President

The Turks and Caicos Islands has numerous talents in the football scene, TCIFA President and Member of FIFA Council Sonia Fulford-Missick said.

Speaking on radio show ‘First Edition’ with hosts Cheryl Forman and Zhavargo Jolly on Tuesday December 6th, 2022, she said, “I don’t want to call any one particular name because we have numerous talented young players, and if you were out to our beach soccer tournament the other day, you saw that we played against the Canadian national team, which was very competitive, and our team was made up of some of our young players, and the same happens for field soccer, so there are many talented players.”

Fulford-Missick said the association is blessed to have their General Secretary Oliver Smith on their team.

“(He) has been coaching even before he came to Turks and Caicos so he has a network that he can tap into of coaches, universities and alike. Our professional players who are abroad in the likes of Billy Forbes, Marco Fenelus and a few others got those opportunities through Oliver. We bring scouts down at an event every year that we call an ID Camp, where we invite coaches from three to five universities and we host tournaments so that they can look at our players,” she added.

Fulford-Missick noted that they haven’t hosted one ID Camp where coaches walked away without identifying players to offer scholarships to and that is what they’ve been doing over the years and what we continue to do.

“From the employments part, I think things are looking up now because once upon a time I don’t think that there was much interest from retired players to come and work for the Football Association (FA) but I think that they’re looking at it now, especially now that we’re really growing and I think that we’re growing father than we have the human resources to handle but we’re not going to frown on it we’re just going to have to deal with it as we go,” she said.

Fulford-Missick revealed that they now have more players expressing interest and recently hired two of their national team players to their team.

“Not to take away anything from our contract coaches who are here on work permit but I think that they understand that everybody knows me and they know who I am and they know what I stand for and what I would like to see in the TCIFA and I’ve been saying this from day one and one of the goals that I had is that I wanted to see football throughout the Turks and Caicos Islands and we’ve done that and we’re doing it well,” she said.
Fulford-Missick also encouraged more coaches from the Turks and Caicos Islanders to be on their team.

“The other thing that I want to see is for all of our coaches to be Turks and Caicos Islanders and I don’t think that there is anything wrong in saying it and I really appreciate what our work permit holders are doing for us.

They’ve contributed and I would say more in a lot of cases to our programs then our very own Turk and Caicos Islanders and that is the end goal,” she added.