The Craig Butler project Pt II

CRAIG BUTLER has said he is a family man, he is passionate, he loves football, he loves people, he loves development.

Still, these are not the traits that have made him a household name. Rather, it is the controversy that surrounds the football coach and agent.

Butler says he is not happy with the state of football in Jamaica and this is one of the main reasons for his combative and hostile persona, especially towards the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) and its structure, which he claims is not affording equal opportunity based on talent.

He asserts that the system in place at the JFF ensures that players from special local clubs are selected for the various national age-group teams, instead of more gifted players from other outfits. He claims this is because individuals within the echelons of the JFF are ensuring that their players meet the European standard of being involved in a major percentage of their national team’s matches, to be afforded professional contracts.

“The way how football runs in Jamaica, there is no real way to make money off football other than to sell a player overseas, transfer a player and get the transfer fee. So if the president or the hierarchy of the JFF all belong to a football club and their players need to get the caps in order to qualify for the work permit for a transfer, they will put their players from their clubs into the national team, even if they are not the best players,” Butler said.

CHANGING STRUCTURE

According to Butler, his aim in 2017 when he sought to replace Captain Horace Burrell, after his death, as president of the JFF, was an urge to change the structure, but not to get corrupted and look out only for the interest of his Phoenix players.

“Lions don’t belong in a pride of sheep. I don’t follow that well. I don’t toe the line that well. I am one who seeks out and believes in rising to the top, and the reason I wanted to become the president of the JFF is to change the constitution. To go in there and change that constitution so that the president of the JFF would come from anyone outside.

“Those who follow my history recognise that I have taken players to Europe knowing fully well I won’t make a dollar out of it. I have consistently said that it’s a conflict of interest and that, if I went into the post, it would only be for a period of a year, maximum, because I wanted to make the change,” he claims.

NOT WITHOUT BLEMISHES

Many within the Jamaican football fraternity, however, argue that Butler is not without blemishes. He is not as pure as he presents himself. According to his detractors, Butler twists facts to get his way, leaves his youngsters unattended at times, does not fully take care of bills at establishments, making his word and opinions on footballing matters difficult to accept.

In this regard, he likened himself to many of mankind’s legends.

“Many people in Jamaica are afraid to speak. Many people in Jamaica are afraid to stand up, but when I look at those who made a positive change in the world, whether it be Nelson Mandela, whether it be Jesus Christ, whether it be Marcus Garvey, whether it is Martin Luther King Jr or Malcolm X or Paul Bogle, whoever it was that made a positive change in this world, they stood up and did something about it.

“I have studied the history of all those men who made positive change and the one consistent factor with all of them, no one liked them. No one who was in charge of the way things are ever liked those who wanted things to become the way they should be,” he said in reaction to the views of his detractors.

For Butler, though, with his adopted son Leon Bailey, the shiny diamond at the apex of the Phoenix Academy, he will continue to engage youth through football, which has also become a profitable business for him.

He claims that Phoenix currently has players from several countries across the globe. It also has players participating in the different schoolboy football competitions at different schools in Jamaica. This includes Mona, which he coaches but dismisses assertions that all his players there are from Phoenix.

“Mona is Mona. Phoenix players are at Mona and any player that goes to Mona usually gravitates towards Phoenix. So we have Mona players playing for Phoenix but we also have players at Kingston College, Jamaica College, Wolmer’s and George’s, so Phoenix is spread across all the youths in Jamaica.

BIGGEST SUCCESS

“My biggest success in football is really seeing our kids matriculate into a better way of life. A little youth who was a ghetto youth, a youth who never had a father, never had any positive future looking at, now standing up with his family, with a wife, with a child, he is working, he is making his way. Leon Bailey is one such youth, but there are, I think it’s going into the thousands now, because we have been doing this from 1980,” he said.

According to Butler, being a general manager at different companies enabled him to be wealthy, something he gave up to struggle in Europe about a decade ago to get his sons, Bailey and Kyle Butler, along with Kevaughn Atkinson, into top clubs on that continent.

Since then, Phoenix has hugely rewarded him financially, but his brashness might have rubbed members of the JFF the wrong way. Butler is not without regret about this, suggesting he might have done things differently if he had the opportunity for a redo.

“I think that I would have been a little more political in how I handled my objections to the JFF, if I could change anything. I would try to be more strategic in terms of building the relationship and then trying to let them see the error of their ways.

“I look at the JFF and I look at many of the people in the JFF. They really trying to accomplish good for the country and good for themselves, but they just don’t realise that the way they are doing it is just the wrong way,” said Butler.

Does he care what the public thinks of him?

“No, my players all love and respect me,” was the blunt and quick response.

job.nelson@gleanerjm.com