Ad­mit­ted­ly, I had writ­ten my col­umn since last Sun­day as with this Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, there are lit­tle to no sports to watch live on tele­vi­sion and I am not ven­tur­ing to see any­thing tak­ing place lo­cal­ly be­cause I try to stay away from crowds.

In­stead, I was look­ing back at the Liv­er­pool ver­sus Atleti­co Madrid game in the UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League round of 16 and I was fo­cus­ing on some in­ter­est­ing post-match com­ments by two man­agers whom I have the high­est re­spect for - Ju­r­gen Klopp and Diego Sime­one.

Sime­one made the most telling con­tri­bu­tion when he sug­gest­ed that the tie was un­fair to Liv­er­pool as his team had 120 min­utes in which to score an away goal (and we know how pre­cious away goals are), while Liv­er­pool on­ly had 90 min­utes to score that all-im­por­tant away goal in the first leg of the tie. The away goals rule does in­deed make the com­pe­ti­tion ex­cit­ing but Sime­one has a great point and I sup­pose we can all find ways to ei­ther sup­port or dis­agree with him, but I am cer­tain that it is some­thing UE­FA will look at go­ing for­ward.

I went back to the col­umn-writ­ing board and scrapped what I pre­vi­ous­ly wrote as I am in a state of shock and dis­be­lief - it has noth­ing to do with the dev­as­ta­tion Covid-19 is caus­ing world­wide, that is bad enough; but, is Fi­fa try­ing to fi­nal­ly put the nail in the cof­fin of T&T’s foot­ball?

The head­line read, “FI­FA re­moves TTFA board, ap­points nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee”. Un­be­liev­able yet true.

Per­haps David Rud­der has to com­pose a new song al­lud­ing to this could not be foot­ball here but rather, mad­ness. Fi­fa has ap­point­ed this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee due to, ac­cord­ing to them, TTFA’s low fi­nan­cial man­age­ment meth­ods and mas­sive debt. Read­ing on, the mighty and un­touch­able Fi­fa says the de­ci­sion fol­lows the re­cent Fi­fa/Con­ca­caf fact-find­ing mis­sion to T&T which found that the TTFA was fac­ing a “very re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty”.

This ‘nor­mal­i­sa­tion’ com­mit­tee now has four man­dates: 1 To run TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs; 2 To es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­ment­ed by the TTFA; 3 To re­view and amend the TTFA statutes (and oth­er reg­u­la­tions where nec­es­sary) and to en­sure their com­pli­ance with the Fi­fa statutes and re­quire­ments be­fore du­ly sub­mit­ting them for ap­proval; 4 To con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

But the burn­ing ques­tion re­mains: af­ter four years, has Fi­fa fi­nal­ly wok­en up and now re­alised that T&T’s foot­ball has been in sham­bles? Well, FI­FA, many ex­am­ples ren­der this sud­den in­ter­ven­tion as rather pe­cu­liar. Our debt rose from $15M to $50M, how come you didn’t in­ves­ti­gate that? The ‘Home of Foot­ball’ project which you gave a neat sum of mon­ey for and your es­teemed pres­i­dent came here and posed with the Prime Min­is­ter and it still can’t be op­er­a­tionalised, how come you didn’t in­ves­ti­gate that? Stephen Hart was fired in bizarre cir­cum­stances, why didn’t you in­ves­ti­gate that? How come you didn’t in­ves­ti­gate the hir­ing of Bel­gian coach Tom Saint­fi­et fol­low­ing Hart’s dis­missal and his sub­se­quent res­ig­na­tion af­ter just 35 days on the job?

Fi­fa, how come you haven’t in­ves­ti­gat­ed the sharp de­cline in women’s foot­ball in T&T when in 2014, we played a play­off with Ecuador and were on the brink of World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion and two years lat­er, we can’t even beat St. Kitts & Nevis? How come you haven’t in­ves­ti­gat­ed why the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor was fired and hasn’t been paid mul­ti­ple pay­ments for ren­dered ser­vices? FI­FA, why have you not in­ves­ti­gat­ed how coach­es were ap­point­ed for var­i­ous na­tion­al teams and some have nev­er been paid? How come, Fi­fa, you haven’t in­ves­ti­gat­ed why we didn’t field a team for the Olympic qual­i­fiers? Go­ing back to the ‘Home of Foot­ball’, Fi­fa, how come you didn’t know the build­ing was unin­sured and lacked statu­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tions from agen­cies such as the T&T Fire Ser­vice be­fore hav­ing your pres­i­dent at­tend the ‘open­ing’ cer­e­mo­ny? How come you didn’t in­ves­ti­gate ru­mours dur­ing the past year about late pay­ments to sup­pli­ers and the non-pay­ment of salaries to staff?

How come you didn’t in­ves­ti­gate the claim by the ex­ec­u­tive who in­vit­ed your pres­i­dent (and on­ly God knows why the Prime Min­is­ter was at the open­ing) that the debt in­her­it­ed was re­duced from $30M to $18M, when in fact af­ter the new ex­ec­u­tive told you the debt is $50M, you sud­den­ly agree to in­ves­ti­gate? FI­FA how can this debt jump from $18M to $50M in a mere few weeks?

Fi­fa, can you please in­ves­ti­gate why crowds don’t go to sup­port T&T foot­ball any­more? At the same time, you may want to heap praise af­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ing our phe­nom­e­nal 15-0 win over An­guil­la?

Fi­fa, can you in­ves­ti­gate why a com­mit­tee was formed to start a pro­posed T-League, an in­tend­ed merg­er be­tween the Pro League and the Su­per League - the top two pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball leagues, the com­mit­tee sent in a bud­get and all pro­pos­als to start the league and just like that, Fi­fa, it was stopped and the then TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion or­gan­ised a "League of Cham­pi­ons" and it is al­leged that cer­tain clubs re­ceived bounced cheques. Please, in lo­cal par­lance, “ah beg­ging!” you, Fi­fa, to in­ves­ti­gate that.

Fi­fa, when you in­ves­ti­gate how the mon­ey was spent to build the ‘Home of Foot­ball’, the coun­try would like to know how much more mon­ey is need­ed to com­plete the build­ing to have it ful­ly func­tion­al.

Fi­fa, I have lots more for you to in­ves­ti­gate but I fig­ure it’s a good start for your nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, but did you know that the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA was du­ly and de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed at an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) of the As­so­ci­a­tion by clubs and of­fi­cials who were en­ti­tled to vote? This in­ter­ven­tion reeks of some­thing more, to say the least.

Ac­cord­ing to one of your for­mer vice-pres­i­dents: “Fi­fa is the most po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion in the world”. I gen­uine­ly be­lieve him.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.