An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Span­ish sport­ing ap­par­el com­pa­ny Jo­ma has of­fi­cial­ly put pen to pa­per on a five-year part­ner­ship with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

This was of­fi­cial­ly pro­claimed yes­ter­day when the TTFA re­vealed the new on-field and train­ing kits, as well as the as­so­ci­a­tion's new lo­go at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain. Jo­ma re­places Adi­das as the of­fi­cial kit provider for all na­tion­al teams which falls un­der the purview of the TTFA.

The kits, in­signia and a new TTFA Web site, which will soon be launched, are among sev­er­al de­vel­op­ments dis­closed by TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee who de­scribed the up­grades as a re­brand­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion's im­age, which has for the past sev­er­al years (while known as the TTFF) been stig­ma­tised for ques­tion­able busi­ness and ac­count­ing prac­tices as well de­tach­ment be­tween play­ers and the TTFF's hi­er­ar­chy.

The five-year deal comes with a new de­sign of a home and an away kit, a jack­et, a train­ing kit, trav­el­ing wear and ca­su­al wear, through the lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor Sport­way Ltd. The se­nior na­tion­al team will sport the new ap­par­el when they kick off their Con­ca­caf Gold Cup cam­paign against El Sal­vador, next Mon­day.

Tim Kee and re­cent­ly ap­point­ed TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Shel­don Phillips, spoke on the vi­sion of a self-sus­tain­able as­so­ci­a­tion, which aims at hav­ing every team, from the beach soc­cer out­fit to the men's se­nior team, qual­i­fy for a Fi­fa com­pe­ti­tion by 2018.

"This rep­re­sents our sym­bol of ex­cel­lence in a new era of foot­ball in our coun­try," said Tim Kee, to the au­di­ence and spe­cial guests, which in­clud­ed the Span­ish am­bas­sador to T&T Joaquin de Aris­tegui.

"For just over a half decade, we have strug­gled to qual­i­fy for the (con)fed­er­a­tion's sig­na­ture com­pe­ti­tion that is the Gold Cup tour­na­ment, and we have not ex­pe­ri­enced suc­cess. This pe­ri­od (last six years) was al­so one that de­fined by in­fight­ing be­tween ad­min­is­tra­tors and play­ers, coach­es and ad­min­is­tra­tors, and even ref­er­ees and ref­er­ees' as­sis­tants."

7pm Sports 2013 07 01

"As I say quite of­ten, it is al­ways bet­ter to re­con­struct than to ren­o­vate, and try­ing to ren­o­vate what we had would have been a task that was un­sur­mount­able, te­dious and labou­ri­ous and there­fore we thought that we should start from the be­gin­ning."

He added, "We have looked from with­in and be­gan to change our val­ue sys­tems. We want­ed to chart our land­scape with qual­i­ties that would de­fine us as a good and no­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen. We want our or­ga­ni­za­tion to be re­mem­bered as trans­par­ent and ac­count­able be­cause we want to show those who in­vest in the busi­ness of foot­ball, that when con­tri­bu­tions are giv­en to us that they are spent in the same man­ner in which they were promised."

"One of the de­ci­sions we have tak­en is that we are go­ing to be self suf­fi­cient. We have en­gaged for the first time in his­to­ry of (our) foot­ball, as far as I know, a mar­ket­ing team that is ded­i­cat­ed ex­clu­sive­ly for look­ing at in­come streams and oth­er mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives."

Tim Kee al­so re­vealed the in­cor­po­ra­tion of an in­de­pen­dent re­view com­mit­tee, of which its pri­ma­ry func­tion will be to ob­serve and an­a­lyze the struc­ture, gov­ern­ing statutes and the fi­nan­cial state of af­fairs. No con­fir­ma­tion has been made on who will head the com­mit­tee, but the mem­ber­ship will in­clude Se­nior Coun­cil El­ton Prescott, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, for­mer na­tion­al se­nior foot­ball team man­ag­er and Fi­fa de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer Richard Braith­waite, renowned jour­nal­ist Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad. For­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er and cur­rent foot­ball an­a­lyst Neil Sha­ka His­lop has al­so been in­vit­ed to sit on the com­mis­sion. Ac­cord­ing to Tim Kee, di­rec­tor of the T&T chap­ter of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, Deryk Mur­ray was in­vit­ed to head the com­mit­tee to over­see trans­paren­cy and had orig­i­nal­ly agreed, but lat­er asked to be ex­cused, due to his many cur­rent oblig­a­tions.

Af­ter mak­ing the rev­e­la­tion Tim Kee said, "We re­al­ly want to change the im­age. We re­al­ly want to look, not on­ly at trans­paren­cy, but in­deed ac­count­abil­i­ty and truth and all the nice val­ues we've pur­sued."

It is un­der­stood that Prescott, who is al­so an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, will re­view the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion and rec­om­mend nec­es­sary amend­ments.