ALLAS, Texas — CONCACAF general secretary Enrique Sanz has indicated that the 2013 Gold Cup is poised to be one of the bestever tournament, if not the best.

Even with resounding responses of fans at the box offices, which resulted in sold-out stadia across the USA, and lucrative income revenue partnerships with various corporate stakeholders, the CONCACAF chief executive officer was still cautious in branding the ongoing event as the most successful in the history of the biennial championship.

“I would say that so far it has been a very successful Gold Cup… we still have two sets of very important games to be played, that’s the two semi-finals and the final of the Interactive Gold Cup and the Gold Cup itself… so we are still a long way to go before putting a label on it,” Sanz told the Jamaica Observer here last Tuesday night, a day before the semi-finals.

“But from our point of view things have been going very good and there are still things to improve. When we have a chance we will look back and analyse what happened and to improve things for the future, and there are always things to improve and that’s the beauty of it,” said the Colombian-born American.

Sanz, just one year in the job of the Jeffrey Webb-led administration, said it was important to recognise key players in the success, to date, of the first Gold Cup tournament he was administering as general secretary.

“We are very happy where we are right now; we are very happy with the support of fans, sponsors, broadcasters and media, from members of the confederation who are here supporting us… already we are planning for the next step to make it bigger and better and more successful,” he said.

Sanz added that the aim is, and will remain a priority goal of the organisation, to make the Gold Cup one of the best confederation tournaments in the world.

“I am satisfied, but still I am looking for improvement every time and I think that’s a key point. Even when you have successful events you are still looking at ways to improve the event because we want to take it from just a game to an event in the city,” he noted.

The football executive said the strengthening of partnerships with the various city hosts will be critical going forward, and already, talks are on the table.

“We have already been in discussions with people, within the cities, to see how we can get closer, and the responses have been positive and we need to just keep following up with that. There’s a lot we can achieve and the sky is the limit here, as long as we are organised and focused and have clear objectives. One of those objectives is to grow the Gold Cup as the marquee event and of course, grow the sport in the region,” Sanz told the Observer.

With CONCACAF only just emerging from a dark past characterised by reports of corruption, starting with the 2011 cash-for-vote scandal, and the recent Integrity report that made damning allegations of impropriety against former president Austin ‘Jack’ Warner and general secretary Chuck Blazer, Sanz said the rebound of the sub-continental body was due in the main to the potential of the region it serves.

“I think we have so much potential in the region, it’s a region with some of the biggest countries in the world, and also small countries… so we are looking at each member from the positive side… we are looking along the lines of the anti-racism campaign, which president Webb launched and which embraces diversity, so we are a diverse confederation and we have to be proud of that.

“If we embrace it all together, we are going to be even stronger and more successful. And I think we are going toward that path of every little country and every big country in the confederation, all embracing the love of the game and going out to making it even bigger,” noted Sanz, in an impassioned response.

He also pointed to a new path of transparency, oversight vigilance and the empowerment of every member association as key components in the revival of CONCACAF.

“We are also trying to get all the members to work together. We understand from day one that this was not going to be a confederation run by a few, but will be run by all the 41 members… the idea is to share success from the most important tournament we have and that’s what we really feel as a family in CONCACAF, and once we have that, it’s easier to share best practices in the region, to help each other when there’s a situation,” Sanz said.

He also preached along the lines of the sharing of knowledge within the CONCACAF family, as a tool to help drive development. Also, he thought that the most valuable resource of the confederation, the talent of players, will stand the test of time on the pursuit for growth.

“We have the club licensing programme and other initiatives and we need to see how we can share that information. In the region, we have a lot of wealth and a lot of knowledge and we need to embrace that. The talent, again from a player perspective, is enormous as a lot of players from our region end up in Europe and become very important players.

“Also, we want to develop our youths, our coaches, our referees and our administrators. If we don’t grow development across the board, then the confederation will not get to its potential,” he ended.