Dear Sports Ed­i­tor

The re­cent FI­FA take-over of Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is a stew of the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go's mis­man­age­ment of fi­nances, FI­FA pol­i­tics and a lack of sol­i­dar­i­ty among CFU (Caribbean Foot­ball Union) mem­bers. How­ev­er, with ob­jec­tive scruti­ny, one can clear­ly dis­cern that the dom­i­nant in­gre­di­ent in this cook-up is bla­tant FI­FA pol­i­tics, and for this rea­son, I be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go could present a very strong and winnable case to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) when the mat­ter is called.

For those who say Trinidad and To­ba­go's chal­lenge to the 'all-pow­er­ful' FI­FA is fu­tile, they adopt a de­featist at­ti­tude, which sends the wrong mes­sage to FI­FA and even­tu­al­ly sig­nals an ab­di­ca­tion of the abil­i­ty to con­trol our des­tiny in the Caribbean; in fact, we will see the con­verse, where­by our des­tiny will be at the whim of the world body. The sit­u­a­tion has far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions and must be viewed from a holis­tic Caribbean foot­ball per­spec­tive.

FI­FA dis­band­ed the four-month-old, de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive led by Pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and re­placed it with a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee on March 27, af­ter giv­ing no­tice on March 17, charg­ing that the new ex­ec­u­tive had no prop­er pro­ce­dures in place for its claimed TT$50 mil­lion debt re­lief plan, a debt in­her­it­ed by the Wal­lace group from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by the for­mer pres­i­dent, David John-Williams.

FI­FA, al­so was not in favour of an at­tempt by the William Wal­lace group to part­ner the UK-based firm, Laven­der Con­sul­tants Ltd., in the de­vel­op­ment of a sports com­plex in Ari­ma as part of the Ex­ec­u­tive's debt re­lief plan (The TTFA, in­stead of pur­su­ing the Ari­ma project, should have fo­cused on get­ting the Home of Foot­ball up and run­ning be­cause it was a huge FI­FA in­vest­ment).

Al­so, the elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive's fail­ure to re­solve what FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF viewed as a con­flict of in­ter­est be­cause of dual roles among mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFRA) and its own Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee was an­oth­er is­sue of con­tention.

This ref­er­ees' sit­u­a­tion ex­ist­ed sev­er­al years be­fore the William Wal­lace Ex­ec­u­tive took of­fice; it was ad­dressed by CON­CA­CAF of­fi­cials un­der the David John-Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion and was giv­en a dead­line of De­cem­ber 31st, 2019, to be re­solved by a re­vi­sion to the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion to com­ply with FI­FA statutes.

A jux­ta­po­si­tion of the afore­men­tioned FI­FA charges against the William Wal­lace Ex­ec­u­tive, de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed on No­vem­ber 24, 2019, and the calami­ty cre­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous David John-Williams Ex­ec­u­tive re­veals the mak­ing of a sol­id case for the Wal­lace Ex­ec­u­tive group.

Here goes: The David John-Williams Ex­ec­u­tive cre­at­ed, among its mal­adies, four years of al­leged fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment of FI­FA Funds, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the de­vel­op­ment of the un­fin­ished and in­op­er­a­ble Home of Foot­ball. The Home of Foot­ball project, sup­pos­ed­ly the sig­na­ture ac­com­plish­ment of the John-Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion, led to a court or­der for trans­paren­cy that re­vealed the short­com­ings of the John-Williams Ex­ec­u­tive, which were doc­u­ment­ed and re­port­ed to FI­FA but from all in­di­ca­tion ap­peared to have been ig­nored.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Ramesh Ramd­han speak­ing to the me­dia in a pub­li­ca­tion on March 21, “These short­com­ings were re­peat­ed­ly ig­nored by Mosen­go-Om­ba (a FI­FA of­fi­cial charged with over­see­ing the project) whose stock re­sponse was that this was an 'in­ter­nal TTFA mat­ter that FI­FA would not in­ter­vene'….” Fur­ther, it was re­port­ed in the print me­dia that the Home of Foot­ball did not meet the lo­cal Fire De­part­ment's re­quire­ments and deemed not for use.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the il­le­gal dis­missal of sev­er­al con­tract­ed coach­es, in­clud­ing for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, Kendall Walkes, and oth­ers still owed monies re­sult­ed in court-or­dered frozen ac­counts to se­cure mil­lions of dol­lars in pay­ments to Walkes (The sit­u­a­tion com­pound­ed the prob­lems for the new Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it set about ex­e­cut­ing the dai­ly op­er­a­tions of the TTFA). Last­ly, FI­FA's ap­point­ment of the fi­nan­cial man­ag­er, Tyril Patrick - the on­ly hold-over by William Wal­lace team from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion - to head the Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee is fur­ther ev­i­dence of FI­FA pol­i­tics at play. Patrick sub­se­quent­ly re­fused the post.

Even­tu­al­ly, the David John-Williams four-year tenure re­sult­ed in poor per­for­mances by all Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al teams; there was a clear de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the stan­dard of foot­ball in the coun­try; and sub­se­quent­ly, foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go was left with an in­op­er­a­ble Home of Foot­ball and an AGM ap­proved TT$32.4 mil­lion debt on Nov. 24th that lat­er was al­leged to be TT$50 mil­lion by William Wal­lace's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

FI­FA charged the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed William Wal­lace Ex­ec­u­tive, based on the afore­men­tioned, with vi­o­lat­ing of ar­ti­cles 8.2 of its Statutes, which states in part, “Ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances be re­moved from of­fice…..”

How­ev­er, an ob­jec­tive view of the sit­u­a­tion in­di­cates that the David John-Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion is the group guilty of cre­at­ing “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances…” I be­lieve CAS will rule in favour of the William Wal­lace group. The court re­sult notwith­stand­ing, what is very im­por­tant here is the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed William Wal­lace Ex­ec­u­tive's re­fusal to ca­pit­u­late to FI­FA.

FI­FA should have act­ed in good faith and should have in­struct­ed the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to work with the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed William Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­vive foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Patrick Horne is a New York-based sports ad­min­is­tra­tor, foot­ball coach and au­thor of Black Pi­o­neers of the North Amer­i­can Soc­cer League (1968-84).