The coun­try stands to face se­vere emo­tion­al ef­fects from an equal­ly emo­tion­al ac­tion by the Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), Richard Fer­gu­son, the own­er and man­ag­er of T&T Pro League cam­paign­ers Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers has said.

Fer­gu­son, a beat­en pres­i­den­tial can­di­date at the TTFA elec­tions in No­vem­ber last year, said there seems to be an ab­sence of log­ic by the Unit­ed TTFA’s team of William Wal­lace, Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick and their sup­port­ing cast in its fight to re­tain the right to be man­agers of lo­cal foot­ball, a right they feel was tak­en away when the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA, ap­point­ed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern the af­fairs of the sport on March 17.

Since then the oust­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive has tak­en its fight to over­turn that de­ci­sion through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS), and now to the High Court in Port-of-Spain, which con­tra­venes a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes that puts the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic in line to be banned.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day Fer­gu­son said: “We have to sit down and think care­ful­ly about what we are do­ing, things don’t seem to be op­er­at­ing log­i­cal­ly in that sit­u­a­tion, peo­ple need to calm down, they need to be un­emo­tion­al and they need to work out if what they are do­ing makes sense or not.

“The more peo­ple sit down and watch this thing ob­jec­tive­ly, it is not mak­ing sense. Re­al­ly and tru­ly, foot­ball be­longs to the FI­FA, it does not be­long to T&T, it does not be­long to TTFA, it does not be­long to the gov­ern­ment, it be­longs to the FI­FA. The FI­FA runs the game be­cause you’re play­ing in FI­FA tour­na­ments so you re­al­ly and tru­ly have to hum­ble your­self and fol­low the rules of the FI­FA.”

The man, who has made a huge im­pact on lo­cal foot­ball with his As­cen­sion In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball League last year, said he likens the de­ci­sion by the Unit­ed TTFA to a play­er who has got­ten a red card for some­thing he may have been in­no­cent about, not­ing, al­though you may not like the red card, you have to hum­ble your­self and come off the field.

FI­FA’s red card which oust­ed the Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive from of­fice fol­lows a vis­it by a team from the CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA in Feb­ru­ary to find out about the is­sues plagu­ing the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, such as a FI­FA stat­ed debt of TT37.4 mil­lion, as well as ways to fix them.

Ac­cord­ing to Fer­gu­son, a lot of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing had to deal with emo­tions and that de­ci­sions can­not be made when one is emo­tion­al. He not­ed that the coun­try stands to lose big time in fi­nances and emo­tion­al­ly.

“I hope that FI­FA does not pun­ish the en­tire coun­try be­cause of a few gen­tle­men break FI­FA rules and I hope that good sense will pre­vail.

“Whilst there are some fi­nan­cial costs in­volved, I be­lieve the emo­tion­al ef­fect will be a lot worst. Foot­ball in T&T is the most pop­u­lar sport and it in­flu­ences the lives and cul­tures of the peo­ple in T&T and should T&T be banned from play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, it will have a huge emo­tion­al ef­fect and you can­not quan­ti­fy that. It is not on­ly em­bar­rass­ing but it’s al­so emo­tion­al­ly ter­ror­is­ing,” Fer­gu­son said.

The lat­est round in the foot­ball saga sees the TTFA ex­tend­ing its arms for me­di­a­tion talks with the FI­FA le­gal team.