Dear Ed­i­tor,

Tues­day marks the 16th an­niver­sary of the icon­ic 2006 World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing (WCQ) vic­to­ry in Bahrain when Den­nis Lawrence scored the his­toric win­ning goal to help Trinidad and To­ba­go to book its spot in Ger­many 2006 World Cup.

The first leg on No­vem­ber 13th end­ed 1-1 with the Chris Bir­chall rock­et of an equalis­er at the Hasley Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo and three days lat­er in Bahrain, T&T came away with a 1-0 vic­to­ry cour­tesy of a Den­nis Lawrence head­er.

It’s tru­ly is sad for Den­nis and al­so T&T foot­ball the cur­rent state of af­fairs that now near­ly two years af­ter hav­ing his (Lawrence) con­tract ter­mi­nat­ed by “Unit­ed” TTFA in favour of the in­fa­mous Eng­lish­man, Ter­ry Fen­wick, he still has not re­ceived even one brass cent on his out­stand­ing salary, bonus­es and bal­ance of his con­tract which in­ci­den­tal­ly in­cludes his bonus pay­ment for the his­toric WCQ win over the USA more than four years ago…..Yes, 4 years!

While Unit­ed pledged to set­tle the amounts due by way of sev­er­al mis­guid­ed pro­pos­als which nev­er tran­spired and in­evitably led to their demise at the helm of T&T Foot­ball, their suc­ces­sors the so-called “Nor­mal­i­sa­tion” Com­mit­tee af­ter 18 months of be­ing in charge have treat­ed the mat­ter of Den­nis’s ar­rears with to­tal dis­re­spect, ap­a­thy and un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

Their lack of con­cern, con­tact and com­mu­ni­ca­tion while bank­ing their month­ly FI­FA stipend/fees is a dis­grace and a shock­ing way to treat a son of the soul and Na­tion­al Hero who has con­tributed more to T&T foot­ball than all of them put to­geth­er.

What on earth are they do­ing to earn their stipend/fees with no ap­par­ent debt re­pay­ment plan, no press con­fer­ences or any plans to re­launch lo­cal and in­deed Na­tion­al foot­ball in T&T.

To ap­point an­oth­er Na­tion­al Coach re­cent­ly and let two FI­FA win­dows pass by with­out any games that would ben­e­fit the play­ers of T&T is lu­di­crous and just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of their er­rat­ic and cost­ly de­ci­sion mak­ing.

How can FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF con­done this lack of ac­tion while the whole foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty of T&T waits pa­tient­ly for some lead­er­ship, mo­ti­va­tion and guid­ance de­signed to res­ur­rect the “corpse” of the “Beau­ti­ful Game” and give young as­pir­ing foot­ballers some hope once again?

The NC should be ashamed of them­selves as they have so far patent­ly not shown any sign of any pos­i­tive moves to jus­ti­fy their ap­point­ment in March 2020 but are hap­py to pick up their month­ly Unit­ed States dol­lars stipends/fees while oth­ers get noth­ing.

If the NC does not do some­thing tan­gi­ble very soon the young­sters in T&T will lose in­ter­est in foot­ball and re­gret­ful­ly look else­where.

They have had enough time and ac­tion is way over­due for the NC to jus­ti­fy its ap­point­ment to the stake­hold­ers, play­ers and peo­ple of T&T not to men­tion the nu­mer­ous cred­i­tors who have been treat­ed abysmal­ly by them. Thank God T&T can still cel­e­brate its his­toric 2006 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Re­gards,

Mike Berry,

Foot­ball In­ter­me­di­ary (The FA)