The T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion is star­ing down the pos­si­bil­i­ty of FI­FA and Caribbean Foot­ball Union sanc­tions as it ap­pears this coun­try would be un­able to field a team for the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Cup qual­i­fiers in St Kitts/Nevis be­gin­ning Oc­to­ber 10. The So­ca War­riors, record eight-time CFU cham­pi­ons are due to face French Guyana, An­guil­la and host St Kitts/Nevis from Oc­to­ber 10 to 14 at Warn­er Park Sta­di­um, Bas­seterre, St Kitts. How­ev­er, that seems a long way off now for the lo­cal team, cur­rent­ly in train­ing un­der coach Hut­son Charles, due to a lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port from Gov­ern­ment, main­ly the Min­istry of Sport. T&TFF Mar­ket­ing Di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Har­ford dis­closed by let­ter that he had re­ceived a neg­a­tive re­sponse to the re­quest for fund­ing the air­fares and al­lowances for the se­nior foot­ball team to par­tic­i­pate in the first round of the Caribbean Cup. The re­sponse re­ferred to came via e-mail from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports, Ash­win Creed.

In his re­ply Creed stat­ed: "With re­gards to the sup­port for the se­nior team you have been in­formed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions that the min­istry fo­cus is on de­vel­op­ment giv­en the abysmal per­for­mance of the se­nior team. As you are aware there is a note be­fore the Cab­i­net to treat with the way for­ward for foot­ball. This note is pred­i­cat­ed on two con­sul­ta­tions held on a de­vel­op­ment plan for foot­ball. The min­istry will be guid­ed by the rec­om­men­da­tions of this note fol­low­ing the ap­proval of Cab­i­net." T&TFF Mar­ket­ing, which is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mar­ket­ing and events at the T&TFF had put in a re­quest for air­fares, in­clud­ing the re­turn of five over­seas-based play­ers, play­er and staff and staff stipends, a week­end camp and ac­com­mo­da­tion for four per­sons. The CFU pays ac­com­mo­da­tion for 25 of the par­ty of 29.

It ex­plained the T&TFF is se­vere­ly strapped for cash as there had been no gov­ern­ment fund­ing since March 2012 and the spon­sor­ship funds raised to date had sup­port­ed the Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 teams, both of which played their qual­i­fiers with­out gov­ern­ment sup­port. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease by the T&TFF Mar­ket­ing arm, the lat­est de­ci­sion by the Min­istry of Sport may even mean the na­tion­al se­nior team may have to with­draw from the Caribbean Cup qual­i­fiers which they are due to de­part for on Mon­day and face pos­si­ble CFU and Fi­fa sanc­tions. This will al­so de­prive the coun­try of pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup next year. The lat­est rev­e­la­tions comes on the heels of news by mem­bers of the cur­rent se­nior team tech­ni­cal staff and T&TFF Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, An­ton Corneal, that he had not been paid in over six months.