Four days af­ter T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he was will­ing to talk to FI­FA, to as­sist in the im­passe in­volv­ing the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball - FI­FA and T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), FI­FA has re­spond­ed to the on­go­ing court mat­ter which the TTFA has lodged in the lo­cal courts.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease on Tues­day from Zurich, Switzer­land: "FI­FA does not, and will nev­er, ac­cept the ju­ris­dic­tion of a lo­cal court in T&T to de­cide on the le­gal­i­ty of the ap­point­ment of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee cur­rent­ly ap­point­ed to run foot­ball in the ter­ri­to­ry.

"For the avoid­ance of doubt, FI­FA on­ly recog­nis­es the au­thor­i­ty and ju­ris­dic­tion of the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in these mat­ters. Any dis­pute re­gard­ing the ap­point­ment of a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee falls square­ly with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion of the CAS, and CAS alone.

"Unit­ed TTFA" it­self pre­vi­ous­ly went to CAS and then uni­lat­er­al­ly with­drew from the CAS process.

"For the sake of com­plete­ness, it should be not­ed that the me­di­a­tion, FI­FA pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to with "Unit­ed TTFA", would nev­er have dealt with the le­gal­i­ty of the ap­point­ment of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and would on­ly have cov­ered some costs re­lat­ed is­sues. This me­di­a­tion will not go ahead now in any event, ow­ing to the fail­ure of the lawyers of "Unit­ed TTFA" to keep the mat­ter con­fi­den­tial, in line with their pro­fes­sion­al and eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions."

FI­FA's re­lease yes­ter­day makes it clear that the promised me­di­a­tion, which was agreed to be­tween par­ties, has been with­drawn be­cause of a breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty by the Unit­ed TTFA lawyers who have made the agree­ment pub­lic via the me­dia.

The me­dia re­port stat­ed that FI­FA agreed on Mon­day, to set­tle its dis­pute with the for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive led by oust­ed pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, out of court.

On May 18, the Unit­ed TTFA team of Wal­lace, Tay­lor, Joseph-War­rick, Phillip, for­mer tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee chair­man Kei­th Look Loy and North Zone Foot­ball pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Har­ford, moved their ap­peal of FI­FA’s de­ci­sion to re­move the elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive from of­fice on March 17, and chal­lenge the mat­ter in the T&T High court.

On March 27, FI­FA im­ple­ment­ed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee with busi­ness­man Robert Hadad as chair­man and at­tor­ney Judy Daniel and for­mer banker Nigel Ro­mano to run and man­age the af­fairs of the lo­cal sports.

On Mon­day, fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of­fer to help in the im­passe, for­mer pres­i­dent William said he be­lieves it's on­ly foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA or the courts, can de­ter­mine whether his or­gan­i­sa­tion will re­gain gov­er­nance of T&T foot­ball, and or pre­vent the coun­try from be­ing banned.

"Noth­ing can be done now," Wal­lace said on Mon­day. He fur­ther stat­ed, "Who does the Prime Min­is­ter want to talk to, the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee or the FI­FA."