News Desk

Af­ter sev­er­al months of le­gal wran­gling be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and FI­FA, the lo­cal body has now de­cid­ed to with­draw its court mat­ter against the world body fol­low­ing an in­for­mal vir­tu­al meet­ing on Tues­day night con­vened by oust­ed TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tives.

Sources who were part of the two-hour on­line Zoom meet­ing at­tend­ed by 32 of the 47 TTFA del­e­gates, said a vote on the is­sue saw 21 del­e­gates vot­ing to drop the case, eight want­ed it to con­tin­ue while three ab­stained from vot­ing.

This means that Wal­lace and his team will now with­draw the mat­ter from the High Court

"There was a pop­u­lar con­sen­sus not to go down a par­tic­u­lar road. It would have been moral­ly wrong for any­one to ig­nore that mat­ter," one source who at­tend­ed the meet­ing, which start­ed at 7 pm, told Guardian Me­dia.

An­oth­er source said the vote by many del­e­gates was made out of fear of a pos­si­ble FI­FA sanc­tion and hinged on the up­com­ing 2021 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in which T&T was list­ed as one of the six pre-seed­ed teams along with Cu­ba, Haiti, Guatemala, Bermu­da and Guade­loupe.

As the vote sug­gests, not all were hap­py with the de­ci­sion.

"We came so far and now this. Why did we fold to FI­FA?" said one dis­ap­point­ed del­e­gate who vot­ed to con­tin­ue the court ac­tion.

The meet­ing re­port­ed­ly start­ed with some con­tro­ver­sy as some del­e­gates claimed they were not in­vit­ed, be­liev­ing the Unit­ed TTFA team had ini­tial­ly in­vit­ed most­ly their sup­port­ers.

Brent San­cho, the act­ing chair­man of T&T Pro League, told the meet­ing the TTFA had reached out to some mem­bers who did not have the vot­ing pow­er and named some of them.

Wal­lace and his vice pres­i­dents - Clynt Tay­lor, Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick – had chal­lenged FI­FA's de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to re­place their ex­ec­u­tive just four months af­ter they had been elect­ed in­to of­fice over then-pres­i­dent David John-Williams’ team.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, Wal­lace’s team filed an in­junc­tion to block the mem­ber­ship from the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing where the same is­sue was to be dis­cussed and were suc­cess­ful in get­ting the in­junc­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports re­cent­ly re­port­ed that there had been sup­port from more than 51 per cent of the TTFA mem­ber­ship for an EGM to vote for Wal­lace and his team to drop lit­i­ga­tion in lo­cal courts against FI­FA and move the mat­ter to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS), which like FI­FA is based in Switzer­land, and al­so recog­nise the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee head­ed by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad.

At the same time, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in had al­so ruled that its case against FI­FA could be held in the T&T courts and not at the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion (CAS), as ac­cord­ing to FI­FA reg­u­la­tions.

The TTFA was ini­tial­ly giv­en an ini­tial dead­line of Sep­tem­ber 16 to with­draw the lo­cal court mat­ter by FI­FA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura.

Last Fri­day, how­ev­er, af­ter the mat­ter of a pos­si­ble ban on the TTFA was not raised at the FI­FA Con­gress, Samoura is­sued an­oth­er warn­ing with a re­vised Sep­tem­ber 23 date to drop the court case or the mat­ter would have been sent to the rel­e­vant FI­FA bod­ies to de­cide on sus­pen­sion of the TTFA.

Af­ter­ward, San­cho said he will now wait to see how gen­uine the Unit­ed TTFA is about find­ing a so­lu­tion to the prob­lems with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. He said at the end of the day, a de­ci­sion has to be made.