The bat­tle rages on be­tween FI­FA, the ex-TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) ex­ec­u­tive and pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, FI­FA’s im­posed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee. Hope­ful­ly, the gov­ern­ment has re­ceived the mes­sage and is stay­ing out.

Strange­ly enough, I haven’t heard about the salaries owed to staff but up to Tues­day, they re­mained un­paid and ad­dress­ing this is sup­pos­ed­ly the first as­sign­ment of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Sure­ly, by now, some arrange­ment should have been worked out with FI­FA and that fund­ing ought to have been enough to pay the salaries of the em­ploy­ees. Per­haps the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee should give it to the ex-TTFA of­fi­cials to pay the em­ploy­ees; af­ter all, it is cru­el for them to re­main un­paid.

But one thing re­mains abun­dant­ly clear of the 33 FI­FA mem­bers placed un­der a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee since 2004: on­ly one was not ful­ly guilty of all the in­frac­tions cit­ed by FI­FA that would trig­ger the en­ac­tion of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. Can you take a guess which one? These so-called nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tees are of­ten per­ceived as FI­FA’s most lethal weapon de­signed to ei­ther re­move an as­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive or work along­side its mem­bers when they wish.

But in most cas­es, the for­mer is cho­sen sim­ply be­cause those run­ning the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion are not al­lies of FI­FA’s hi­er­ar­chy. The for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive was work­ing on a long-term plan to re­duce its debt and im­ple­ment sus­tain­able fi­nan­cial man­age­ment poli­cies and pro­ce­dures. Af­ter all, they were in of­fice for on­ly three months which begs so many ques­tions on what ex­act­ly in­flu­enced the im­po­si­tion of this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Cast your mind back or un­der­take some per­son­al re­search to find out who was open­ly one of FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no’s ear­li­est and even­tu­al strongest al­lies in the Caribbean re­gion? Who was the first Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent to sup­port In­fan­ti­no’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2016?

Then let us not for­get In­fan­ti­no’s vis­it to T&T just six days be­fore the TTFA’s elec­tion in No­vem­ber 2019 to sup­port his ob­vi­ous pre­ferred can­di­date who lost the elec­tion and all hell then, un­for­tu­nate­ly, broke loose.

How dare these ob­nox­ious, de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed vot­ers not vote for In­fan­ti­no’s main man? Af­ter all, the debt was grow­ing, foot­ball was go­ing back­ward, our men’s team could on­ly beat An­guil­la and our women looked dis­joint­ed and lacked any team spir­it. But most im­por­tant­ly, FI­FA was no­ti­fied through var­i­ous means about the brew­ing dis­as­ter with­in T&T’s foot­ball and was re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed to in­ter­vene from 2017 - 2019 and de­cid­ed to do noth­ing. Why?

Present­ly in Kenya, the coun­try’s high­est sports ar­bi­tra­tion body, the Sports Dis­putes Tri­bunal has for­mal­ly re­quest­ed FI­FA to step in and ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for the pur­pose of hold­ing the elec­tions of the Foot­ball Kenya Fed­er­a­tion (FKF). This re­quest was made on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2020 and noth­ing has hap­pened with Kenya’s foot­ball elec­tions.

I could go back to 2017 and re­hash the state of Kenya’s foot­ball and the on­go­ing prob­lems but that is their busi­ness. How­ev­er, all I will say is just guess who the pres­i­dent of FKF is a strong al­ly of and you will un­der­stand why no nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee has moved in­to their foot­ball.

Do I still need to point out why a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was put in place here in T&T’s foot­ball? It cer­tain­ly had very lit­tle to do with the state and fi­nances of our foot­ball which it should have done over two and a half years ago. But like a spoiled child, a grown man in FI­FA did not get the toy he want­ed for Christ­mas and us­es the weapon of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to scar our foot­ball. Yet still, we have peo­ple in this coun­try open­ly ap­prov­ing this dirty un­der­hand take over of our de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed of­fi­cials.

I must say, I was ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed to hear the men’s na­tion­al coach’s com­ments on this im­passe but I do un­der­stand he has a job to pro­tect. The gen­tle­man’s in­dis­putable pas­sion for the game of foot­ball is sec­ond to none. I know many are suf­fer­ing from this dis­pute with foot­ball fans up­set but some­times it is bet­ter to not com­ment. Your job, when the time aris­es, is to coach and get re­sults for our na­tion­al team and I want to hear what your plans are for tak­ing T&T’s foot­ball for­ward. As a na­tion­al coach, it is best to stay out of pol­i­tics.

Then there are those from out­side like the for­mer chair­man of FI­FA’s 2014 nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to Guyana. Quite frankly, I don’t wish to hear from him un­less he is go­ing to first tell us just how dif­fer­ent were the cir­cum­stances in which that nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed. For him to say, “I sym­pa­thise with Wal­lace and his team, I know how they feel…” shows that he lacks any un­der­stand­ing of this is­sue. Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, the for­mer Chair­man made men­tion that, “... in 2015 there were talks to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee (to T&T) so it re­al­ly does not make a dif­fer­ence if it is ap­point­ed now.” Oh no Sir, it does make a dif­fer­ence.

Re­mem­ber, in 2015 a new kid came on the block and sup­port­ed a cer­tain per­son run­ning for FI­FA pres­i­dent so nat­u­ral­ly, the idea of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was then dead and buried un­til that new kid lost the elec­tion in 2019. For­mer chair­man of Guyana’s nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, mind­ing your own busi­ness can be chal­leng­ing in­deed.

Then there is the pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), who says the body is not dead but his as­so­ci­a­tion is like a ghost so it may as well be dead. You see, there is no longer uni­ty in Caribbean foot­ball. It is each for thy­self and those who sur­vive, fine, but those sink­ing, let them sink be­cause you can get in­to se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ty with no as­sis­tance from FI­FA.

No one has the for­ti­tude quite like Jack Warn­er did to say to In­fan­ti­no and com­pa­ny, give this new­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive a chance; as­sign some­one from FI­FA to work with them and let them find their way out of this mess they in­her­it­ed. But in­stead, FI­FA comes with this colo­nial­ist-style of im­po­si­tion with a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to es­sen­tial­ly rob a new ex­ec­u­tive of a chance to sort out its own af­fairs and there are peo­ple here in sup­port of this.

I will con­tin­ue to tell William Wal­lace to lis­ten to Robert Nestor Mar­ley, "Get up stand up, stand up for your rights".

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