The Board of Di­rec­tor of the T&T Pro League has said it unan­i­mous­ly ac­cept­ed the de­ci­sion on Tues­day by world gov­ern­ing body for the sport of foot­ball Fi­fa to es­tab­lish a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee to steer the fi­nan­cial and statu­to­ry af­fairs of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

In a re­lease on Thurs­day fol­low­ing a con­fer­ence meet­ing of the board it stat­ed: "The Board of the TT Pro League has unan­i­mous­ly ac­cept­ed the de­ci­sion by Fi­fa to es­tab­lish a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee to steer the fi­nan­cial and statu­to­ry af­fairs of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

As a foot­ball com­pa­ny who have in­vest­ed over two hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars in­to the na­tion­al econ­o­my over the last 18 years, the TT Pro League stand ready to work along­side the Min­istry of Sports and the FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee for the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of the game.

We have in­struct­ed our rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the for­mer TTFA Board, Mr Brent San­cho, that the TT Pro League will not sup­port any move by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­gage in any le­gal bat­tle against FI­FA over their re­moval from of­fice."

In a let­ter dat­ed March 17 to the TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Rand­han FI­FA wrote: Un­der these se­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, and in ac­cor­dance with ar­ti­cle 8 para­graph 2 of the Fi­fa statutes (which fore­sees that ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may, un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, be re­moved from of­fice by the Fi­fa Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od of time), the Bu­reau of the Coun­cil de­cid­ed, on 17 March 2020, to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for the TTFA.

Fol­low­ing the news from FI­FA, the em­bat­tled pres­i­dent William Wal­lace told the me­dia that he was dis­ap­point­ed by FI­FA's ac­tion which they con­sid­ered to be an un­just, un­fair and a dis­re­spect­ful act by the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball (FI­FA) and will turn to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) to over­turn a de­ci­sion by FI­FA, which on Tues­day ap­point­ed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to run the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball.

William said, "We took a while to get over the shock, it was to­tal dis­be­lief. Since then we have pooled our re­sources to­geth­er and have de­cid­ed that this is in­jus­tice, it is dis­re­spect, it shows some po­lit­i­cal play go­ing on here to pro­tect, I don't know who, but clear­ly, this is un­prece­dent­ed when you look at what those com­mit­tees are set up to do. It is in cas­es of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es such as elec­tions. Our elec­tions were su­per­vised by the FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF, so there were no is­sues with the elec­tions, but now they are say­ing be­cause of the same fi­nan­cial de­fi­cien­cy that we point­ed out to them when they were here, they are now us­ing that as a rea­son, but we have gone be­yond that, we have put things in place."

The Pro League re­lease con­tin­ued: At a time when the dread­ed coro­n­avirus is tak­ing its toll on the health and eco­nom­ic wel­fare of the coun­try, on the re­quest of the Min­is­ter of Sports we are send­ing a pro­pos­al by March 31st for re­brand­ing the pro­fes­sion­al league, use of com­mu­ni­ty fields and de­vel­op­ing a pro­pos­al for a part­ner­ship with FI­FA, the Min­istry of Sport and Cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go. A plan aimed at ad­dress­ing the eco­nom­ic, so­cial and sport­ing needs of the na­tion­al and re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

While we can­not pre-empt any se­lec­tion by FI­FA we would like to see the Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee com­prise of cred­i­ble non-par­ti­san per­sons from the lo­cal le­gal, sport­ing and busi­ness sec­tor. We at the Pro League feel the time for mud­sling­ing, char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tions and ego­tism in our foot­ball must be re­placed with a greater re­solve to col­lec­tive­ly ad­dress the chal­lenges ahead."