Nigel Si­mon

William Wal­lace, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TFA) na­tion­al team Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er says if the lo­cal fed­er­a­tion is to sat­is­fy all its na­tion­al teams on a year­ly ba­sis, then a bud­get of $75 mil­lion will be need­ed.

Wal­lace made this dis­clo­sure while speak­ing at a T&TFA me­dia con­fer­ence called to re­launch the So­ca War­riors brand and give up­dates on a num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties planned, at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, VIP Lounge, yes­ter­day.

Com­ment­ing on what has tak­en place on the field so far this year, Wal­lace not­ed the T&T na­tion­al teams have been kept very busy, but is find­ing it very tough due to a lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port, not with­stand­ing the on­go­ing feud be­tween its pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and Min­is­ter of Sports, for­mer World Cup de­fend­er, Brent San­cho.

A crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor as well, Wal­lace said so far this year sev­en na­tion­al teams have par­tic­i­pat­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, and if the se­nior team has to be go­ing through what it has been in terms of fund­ing, then peo­ple can well imag­ine what is hap­pen­ing at the low­er lev­els for the oth­er teams.

Re­flect­ing on a re­cent sit­u­a­tion he said, "Our Un­der-17 women team re­cent­ly had a tour­na­ment and they al­most did not make it to the qual­i­fiers, not be­cause they were not pre­pared but be­cause of a lack of fi­nances.

He added: "Let me just say T&T we have to get se­ri­ous.

"All over the world foot­ball is im­pact­ing lives and right here at home as well we can all re­flect on 1989 and 2006.

"To me these were defin­ing mo­ments in T&T's his­to­ry where it brought peo­ple to­geth­er and it must not go un­no­ticed, and if we are to sat­is­fy all our teams we are def­i­nite­ly talk­ing about $75 mil­lion a year.

"We are talk­ing about hav­ing full-time staff, be­cause as a mat­ter fact, right now we don't even have a full quo­ta of full-time staff on our se­nior na­tion­al team.

"The coach is the on­ly full-time per­son on the se­nior team, the same team that per­formed so well at the Gold Cup, that was able to fight hard against Mex­i­co."

He added: "This is our flag­ship team, so you can imag­ine what hap­pens at the low­er lev­els. So, in this re­gard, I have to com­pli­ment all coach­es and mem­bers of staff, tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive for keep­ing this thing afloat, with­out prop­er re­mu­ner­a­tion.

"Be­cause if it was not for them, this dream would have die, and thats the dream of many cit­i­zens of T&T.

Tim Kee added: "USA's bud­get for foot­ball a year is over US$100 mil­lion while Mex­i­co's is more than US$150, but here in T&T we strug­gle to raise US$5 mil­lion, and one of the rea­sons is that we don't have the pop­u­la­tion to push the turn­stiles to come in the sta­di­ums, to gen­er­ate funds that will even off­set the cost of host­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al match."

In ex­plain­ing why T&T has not host­ed many match­es in re­cent times, Tim Kee said: "Gen­er­al­ly 95 per cent of the match­es we host here in T&T, we end up in deficit be­cause we just don't have the num­bers. The play­ers and the teams we have been look­ing at are top qual­i­ty teams be­cause if we want to go and be with the top teams we need to be play­ing top qual­i­ty teams.

"That why we have been per­form­ing in re­cent times as we have been be­cause we have been lim­ing the ea­gles, the top teams as Tim Kee de­scribed it.

"Our per­for­mances are be­gin­ning to match our ex­pec­ta­tions and through those kind of dis­plays as well it is then we will at­tract pa­tron­age and sup­port, but to get there is a re­al up­hill task, so all we can do is plead to the cit­i­zens of this coun­try, cor­po­rate and pri­vate to come for­ward and sup­port our team.

"We have a new con­sti­tu­tion, and we have re-ad­just­ed our or­gan­i­sa­tion but have not filled all the po­si­tions be­cause that calls for mon­ey again, but we are look­ing for­ward and fo­cus on the field to be a re­al chal­lenge to any team in Con­ca­caf and we will demon­strate that again.

"We did it re­cent­ly at the Gold Cup against Mex­i­co, and to the USA I say here we come when Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers be­gin on No­vem­ber 17."