The Concacaf Under-15 Championship, which was scheduled to be held in Cayman Islands and Jamaica in August, has been postponed in the wake of the Fifa corruption scandal.

The Bermuda Football Association was preparing to send a team to the tournament, the bulk of the under-15 squad coached by Dennis Brown and Ray Jones that was crowned co-champions of the Open Cup in Decatur, Alabama, in April.

“I really feel for the players because they have been putting in lots of work in preparation for the tournament,” Brown said. “We had just increased our training to five days per week.

“This is a very talented and disciplined group of young players. I hope that something can be worked out to find an alternative to the postponed tournament.”

The tournament would have involved more than 30 countries, including Brazil and England, in what would have been the biggest youth tournament staged in the region.

However, Concacaf’s executive committee said they had decided to postpone the tournament until further notice, although they made no mention of the bribery scandal which has engulfed the game’s governing body.

The regional body did say it had plans to restore a full slate of complementary youth development tournaments in the shortest possible time.

“This includes our objective to reschedule the Under-15 Boys’ Championship, at the soonest opportunity,” officials said. There was no indication as to where the competition would be held.

Jeffrey Webb, the former Fifa vice-president, had focused heavily on the game at grass-roots level and had ensured that Cayman also benefited from his influence within Fifa by bringing development tournaments to the island. “Our teams will be competing against stellar international line-ups at a youth level, assisting both sides in elevating the standards of the game and the quality of play,” Webb said when Brazil announced their participation in the tournament.

“This is but one example of how we are using football to attract opportunities for our youth, and utilising the power of the game to inspire a new generation.”

However, with Webb still sitting in a Swiss jail cell fighting his extradition to the United States after being accused of being involved in the $150 million bribery and racketeering scandal, Concacaf has placed the tournament on hold.

“Concacaf continues to be focused on its core mission of delivering outstanding football events,” officials said yesterday.

“In the short-term, efforts will be dedicated in full to the successful delivery of the upcoming Concacaf Gold Cup, in addition to other Championships which also qualify Concacaf teams to worldwide-level tournaments, such as the men’s Olympic Qualifying Championship and the Under-20 Women’s Championship, to be played as scheduled later in 2015.”

Osbourne Bodden, the Cayman Sports Minister, has broken his silence about the arrest of Webb and the implications for local sport, saying on local radio, that it was “gut wrenching”.

“We’ve always heard of corruption in Fifa,” Bodden said. “That’s something that everybody talks about. But we never thought it would impact us, as it were.”

Bodden accepted that if Webb is involved, “then we’re involved”.