The first batch of foot­ball uni­forms and gear to of­fi­cial­ly jump­start the deal be­tween UK sports­wear sup­pli­er Avec Sports and the oust­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion un­der pres­i­dent William Wal­lace is set to ar­rive in T&T on June 1.

How­ev­er, Wal­lace who is one of two sig­na­tures on the con­tract, is al­ready count­ing it a lost cause, say­ing the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport - FI­FA, with whom they are bat­tling to re­move the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which was ap­point­ed on March 27, has al­ready re­ject­ed the spon­sor­ship mon­ey be­cause of the in­volve­ment of him (Wal­lace) and his vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick. The first part of the deal will en­ti­tle the ship­ment of uni­forms and gear to out­fit all the coun­try's na­tion­al teams at a val­ue of $1.4 mil­lion.

There­after the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion will be re­quired to sell £$125,000 or 7,500 repli­ca shirts and oth­er gear for the UK com­pa­ny, and the prof­it from the sales will be shared 80 for Avec and 20 per cent for the TTFA and Sports and Games, the lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors.

On Tues­day, Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee said he had no com­ment on the mat­ter via a What­sapp mes­sage.

When con­tact­ed Wal­lace said Hadad has re­ceived or­ders to re­ject any help deal that was cre­at­ed through the pre­vi­ous Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Wal­lace said that be­cause they are be­ing con­sid­ered per­sona non gra­ta by Hadad and the FI­FA, that five oth­er po­ten­tial con­tracts that can pro­vide much-need­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to T&T foot­ball have been turned down, in­clud­ing Caribbean Chem­i­cals and Agen­cies Lim­it­ed which had de­cid­ed to pump $1.5 mil­lion a year for four years to prop­er­ly main­tain foot­ball fields but pulled out of the deal on March 19, while four oth­ers which were to be con­firmed fell apart af­ter FI­FA's Nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee was an­nounced.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that the TTFA was ex­pect­ed to sign oth­er spon­sor­ship arrange­ments last March.

Wal­lace who is al­so pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) dis­missed a claim by for­mer Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Clin­ton Url­ing that in the case of a nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee, the FI­FA will pro­vide the fund­ing up­on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a pro­gramme to liq­ui­date the debt etc.

Wal­lace in­stead re­ferred to one of the man­dates of the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee which is to es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­mentable by the TTFA, say­ing the FI­FA nev­er said it will pay off the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion debt.

“I will with­draw my fight with the FI­FA in the morn­ing if the FI­FA us­es its mon­ey to clear the debt,” Wal­lace said.

At present, the TTFA has no uni­forms with the ex­pi­ra­tion of the Jo­ma kit deal in 2018 and the tour­na­ment deal with Capel­li which was just for the Gold Cup (June 15 to Ju­ly 7, 2019) could find it­self in a mad rush for uni­forms with the FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers, the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and oth­er qual­i­fiers and match­es to be­gin soon.

Wal­lace in a pre­sen­ta­tion to jump­start his cam­paign for TTFA as­cen­den­cy ear­ly last year, list­ed sev­er­al spon­sor­ship deals that would come to fruition on­ly once he be­came TTFA pres­i­dent, in­clu­sive of the con­tract with world sports­wear gi­ants Nike. Yes­ter­day Wal­lace ad­mit­ted that the Nike deal was a le­git one that was on­ly ham­pered by peo­ple who claim to love the sport but were do­ing every­thing in their pow­er to de­stroy it.

CON­CA­CAF's se­nior coun­sel for North Amer­i­can Sports Mar­ket­ing Zoe Braith­waite said in a re­lease last year that there was no deal be­tween the Unit­ed T&TFA and glob­al sport­ing ap­par­el gi­ant Nike.