Dear Ed­i­tor

There is much crit­i­cism of the de­ci­sion to re­place the elect­ed lead­er­ship of TTFA with a FI­FA nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee so ear­ly in its tenure. Crit­ics have ques­tioned the tim­ing and put for­ward all kinds of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as to why the Unit­ed TTFA team were al­lowed less than four months at the helm.

Could it be, how­ev­er, that af­ter vis­it­ing TTFA in Feb­ru­ary, the FI­FA rep­re­sen­ta­tives saw signs of gross fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment and poor de­ci­sion mak­ing that had to be nipped in the bud?

With the elec­tion of an open­ly an­ti-FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive in Trinidad and To­ba­go, who im­me­di­ate­ly closed and ridiculed the Home of Foot­ball - opened with im­mense pride by In­fan­ti­no mere days be­fore - it is ob­vi­ous that the FI­FA pres­i­dent would view the new TTFA regime with con­tempt.

So when FI­FA looked at the debt re­duc­tion plans of Unit­ed TTFA and their first few man­age­ment de­ci­sions, alarm bells start­ed to ring.

The uni­form deal with un­known Eng­lish sup­pli­er Avec was an­nounced by Unit­ed TTFA as a key el­e­ment of its debt re­duc­tion plan. An­nounc­ing a deal that would gen­er­ate TT$25 mil­lion over four years, this was the first big piece of busi­ness in­tro­duced by the new regime.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, William Wal­lace, who cam­paigned on a plat­form of open­ness, good gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy - ne­go­ti­at­ed and signed the con­tract with Avec be­fore ob­tain­ing ap­proval or in­put from its own TTFA board of di­rec­tors.

And once board mem­bers de­mand­ed sight of the con­tract, the then Pres­i­dent Wal­lace re­fused to dis­trib­ute copies but in­stead in­sist­ed that the con­tract could be viewed at the TTFA of­fice, but not be copied and tak­en away. Thus, di­rec­tors were forced to at­tempt to ab­sorb a 16-page con­tract with fig­ures quot­ed in both UK and US cur­ren­cies af­ter at­tend­ing a board meet­ing.

On clos­er in­spec­tion, the con­tract did not ap­pear to be the in­come re­duc­ing God­send de­scribed by Unit­ed TTFA.

Let's be clear on this: uni­form sup­pli­ers are there to make mon­ey. While gi­ants such as Adi­das and Nike will sup­ply free uni­forms to big-name na­tions and clubs, they do so with care­ful­ly mea­sured pre­dic­tions of repli­ca sales. They are forced to ne­go­ti­ate against the oth­er big names to ob­tain the mar­ket­ing ku­dos of equip­ping World cham­pi­ons and elite sports clubs and teams who have con­stant me­dia cov­er­age and top name play­ers and coach­es.

Sad­ly, for now, Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball do not be­long in that cat­e­go­ry.

But Avec is build­ing a brand and T&T would be a coup that could lead to oth­er na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions com­ing on board. Still, the com­pa­ny would need to en­ter a con­tract that would pro­vide them with fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. So the deal of­fered would al­ways ben­e­fit the sup­pli­er first.

The Avec con­tract guar­an­tees the sup­ply of free equip­ment for TTFA's na­tion­al men and women's teams at se­nior, U20, U17, U15 and U13 lev­els.

The val­ue of this equip­ment equates to ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$1,300,000 per year, for 4 years. Over TT$5 mil­lion worth of equip­ment. On the face of it, a good deal for TTFA.

But when we look at the con­tract with Avec agreed by Unit­ed TTFA with­out its board ap­proval, some very wor­ry­ing com­mit­ments come to light.

Unit­ed TTFA has agreed to pur­chase a min­i­mum of 7,500 repli­ca jer­seys each year for 4 years. That fig­ure may seem achiev­able to a na­tion play­ing reg­u­lar home fix­tures and achiev­ing re­spectable re­sults.

But to a busi­ness­man tasked to re­duc­ing debt, it's a big con­cern. The jer­seys will each cost TTFA US$29.65 ex­clud­ing vat (around TT$192.72). The con­tract de­mands pay­ment be­fore the goods are shipped, which means that TTFA is com­mit­ted to spend­ing around TT$1,445,400 ex­clud­ing vat each year for four years - TT$5,781,600.

Once in pos­ses­sion of these jer­seys, it is then the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of TTFA to sell these items as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to re­coup their out­lay.

To do this, Unit­ed TTFA en­tered in­to a well-pub­li­cised deal with Sports & Games. Again, on the sur­face, a pro­gres­sive move. S&G will have ex­clu­sive rights to re­tail the jer­seys and will re­turn 80% of net prof­its to TTFA. If all goes well, TTFA will see a tidy prof­it.

<Hop­ing for the best, plan­ning for the worse>

But there are many ques­tions to be an­swered be­fore an in­vest­ment such as this takes place. The first and ob­vi­ous ques­tion is where will TTFA ob­tain the $TT1.5 mil­lion to pur­chase the jer­seys? How much will the jer­seys re­tail for? Af­ter all, TTFA jer­seys will be com­pet­ing with big brands such as Adi­das and Nike who will be push­ing repli­ca jer­seys from clubs such as Barcelona and Man Utd. When faced with a choice, where will T&T foot­ball fans spend their mon­ey? And worse, in 2022 we will en­counter the huge World Cup mar­ket­ing cam­paign push­ing repli­ca jer­seys from Ger­many, Brazil, Ar­genti­na etc.

As a busi­ness, you need to hope for the best, but plan for the worse. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for Unit­ed TTFA they ei­ther did not un­der­stand this or chose to ig­nore it. Be­cause the worst has hap­pened. With the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, foot­ball is at a stand­still like all oth­er sports and economies across the world. With un­told months of in­ac­tion from our na­tion­al teams, this can hard­ly pro­vide fer­tile re­tail con­di­tions as de­sired by Unit­ed TTFA. Hard­ly con­ducive to lux­u­ry pur­chas­es such as repli­ca jer­seys.

So Unit­ed TTFA has gam­bled by com­mit­ting to spend­ing near­ly TT$1.5 mil­lion per year - mon­ey that could have been used to re­duce debts.

An­oth­er key as­pect of the Avec deal is that Unit­ed TTFA has com­mit­ted to pur­chase fur­ther Avec equip­ment. At a cost per year of just over TT$1 mil­lion.

This equip­ment, again, will be ex­clu­sive­ly sold by Sports & Games and will in­clude items such as track­suits, kit bags, caps, shorts, socks etc.

But re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, what is the like­li­hood of S&G sell­ing that quan­ti­ty of mi­nor brand equip­ment that earns them on­ly 20% of net prof­it, when they will be stock­ing ma­jor brand items with far greater markup? And every year, an­oth­er TT$1 mil­lion worth of stock will ar­rive!

Re­gard­ing pur­chas­es of repli­ca jer­seys and equip­ment, the con­tract ac­tu­al­ly com­mits the items to be pur­chased by the TTFA's “Ap­proved Re­tail Part­ner” and TTFA's “spon­sors”.

Yet these en­ti­ties are not named in the con­tract and did not sign the con­tract. How­ev­er, fail­ure to pur­chase these an­nu­al quan­ti­ties will re­sult in TTFA hav­ing to pay the full val­ue of the free na­tion­al team uni­forms.

So here's the re­al dan­ger: If Sports & Games, for any rea­son, fail to pur­chase the TT$2.5 mil­lion worth of stock in, say, year 4 of this con­tract, TTFA will owe Avec over TT$5 mil­lion. A com­mit­ment that was nev­er ap­proved by the TTFA board.

As men­tioned at the be­gin­ning of this let­ter, Avec is a busi­ness, and they, un­der­stand­ably, have con­struct­ed a deal in which they can­not lose. A glance at the “free” uni­forms to be sup­plied shows that there are far more items be­ing sup­plied than are nec­es­sary for an as­so­ci­a­tion with an al­leged debt of TT$50 mil­lion.

<Qual­i­ty of uni­forms for lim­it­ed us­age>

First­ly, is it nec­es­sary to pur­chase full sets of new uni­forms each year? Even if each na­tion­al team played 12 games per year, which is un­like­ly, can these uni­forms not with­stand such low lev­els of us­age? Ob­vi­ous­ly, there is wear and tear. But 60 home and 60 away jer­seys per team, per year?

Does each team re­quire 120 track­suits per year? In our cli­mate, track­suits would on­ly be es­sen­tial for away trips out­side of the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. On­ly 20-24 play­ers would trav­el. So why 120 track­suits per team, per year?

Do we need 120 po­lo shirts per squad? Sure­ly, they would on­ly be need­ed for the 20-24 play­ers se­lect­ed for each squad. That should to­tal no more than 50 play­ers per squad per year. And are base­ball caps a ne­ces­si­ty? Amid a fi­nan­cial cri­sis such as the cur­rent TTFA sit­u­a­tion, pen­nies must be count­ed and debt must be re­duced.

We would hope that Sports & Games per­form ad­mirably and we will see a new in­come stream.

But FI­FA live in the re­al world, and when they saw this deal (and they would be aware of oth­er as­so­ci­a­tions uni­form deals), they would see a sword of Damo­cles hang­ing over TTFA for four years.

Add to this the po­ten­tial $6 mil­lion con­tract of Ter­ry Fen­wick, along with a myr­i­ad of oth­er coach­ing and staff con­tracts and per­haps In­fan­ti­no felt it was not such a fan­tas­tic debt man­age­ment plan.

Per­haps, a bet­ter, smarter move would have been to sim­ply pur­chase na­tion­al team uni­forms at a dis­count? Buy what you can af­ford and cre­ate re­tail de­mand. Let sports out­lets place or­ders and use their funds to buy the repli­cas.

What is the need, for ex­am­ple, of pur­chas­ing 120 jer­seys for the U13 boys and girls when we don't even know if we can af­ford for them to play an in­ter­na­tion­al fix­ture?

Unit­ed TTFA may be­lieve they have the foot­ball knowl­edge to win match­es, but this deal, for one, ex­pos­es their to­tal ig­no­rance of the busi­ness of foot­ball and the need to con­sult with their board.

Kevin Har­ri­son

Op­er­a­tions Di­rec­tor

Cen­tral F.C.