Dis­ap­point­ed by what they con­sid­ered to be an un­just, un­fair and dis­re­spect­ful act by the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball (FI­FA), the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion un­der the lead­er­ship of William Wal­lace has turned 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.

The TTFA has re­tained the ser­vices of at­tor­neys Dr Emir Crowne and Math­ew Gayle two prominen­ert sports lawyers.

Ramesh Ramd­han, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, re­vealed on Wednes­day that their at­tor­neys would be writ­ing to the FI­FA to be­gin their fight against the de­ci­sion.

"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."

"What we are do­ing now, is us­ing the same thing that they sent and pe­ti­tion­ing the court of ar­bi­tra­tion for sports to deal with this mat­ter. Be­cause to not do that, will be to al­low in­jus­tice to pre­vail," Ramd­han ex­plained.

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.

On re­ceiv­ing the news on Tues­day Pres­i­dent William Wal­lace told An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on is­ports on i95.5fm ra­dio pro­gramme that: "We are not go­ing to roll over and die."

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal foot­ball boss “There is still hope, we have writ­ten to FI­FA and we are await­ing a re­sponse and we will take it from there. When Fi­fa ar­rived, we gave them a re­port from our fi­nance pro­fes­sion­als de­tail­ing what struc­tures and ar­eas need to be ad­dressed in a re­port form and they told us great, that was half of their work done so now to read these state­ments on the fi­nan­cial struc­ture, it's strange. Al­so, as it re­lates to the debt, we gave the team an MOU (Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing) with one of our part­ners on how we planned to ad­dress the debt is­sue and as I have stat­ed we will clear the debt in two years. So what I am say­ing, if they had ques­tions on the doc­u­ments, we pre­sent­ed, they could have called us to dis­cuss, that is all and ask for more proof."

Wal­lace said he is al­so await­ing a re­sponse from the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) in light of what had tran­spired.

"In­ci­den­tal­ly, I got a call from the pres­i­dent of the Union - Randy Har­ris, and he asked about the ac­count be­ing frozen and I men­tioned how it was a court mat­ter and we are work­ing on it. He told me that 'T&T is very im­por­tant to the Caribbean in foot­ball so we can­not al­low FI­FA to send a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee." and that 'What­ev­er sup­port we can help with at the CFU, we will'. But of course, they do not have much funds but he al­so stat­ed that when our con­ver­sa­tion was fin­ished he was go­ing to call CON­CA­CAF," said Wal­lace.

Word of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee had both men tak­en aback, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it is felt the FI­FA was con­tra­dict­ing its pol­i­cy. Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­han "In sum­ming up the vis­it by the FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF team over the days of ac­tiv­i­ties here, they were quite pleased. As a mat­ter of fact, they com­mend­ed us for tak­ing cer­tain mea­sures to rec­ti­fy the fi­nan­cial is­sues we faced, and we had al­ready done a pa­per to take to the Board for ap­proval, there­fore this de­ci­sion runs con­trary to what we were told."

Ramd­han said his as­so­ci­a­tion was not in­formed of the de­ci­sion and had to get it from the web­site.

The FI­FA cor­re­spon­dance con­tin­ued: 'The spec­i­fied pe­ri­od of time dur­ing which the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee will per­form its func­tions will ex­pire as soon as it has ful­filled all of its as­signed tasks, but no lat­er than 24 months af­ter its mem­bers have been of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed by the FI­FA ad­min­is­tra­tion. The ex­act date for the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to com­plete its man­date will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the Fi­fa ad­min­is­tra­tion once its mem­bers have been ap­point­ed.

In the in­ter­im and be­fore the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is ful­ly op­er­a­tional, the TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­age­ment will be su­per­vised by Mr Tyril Patrick, who will di­rect­ly re­port to Fi­fa. The TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion—in its en­tire­ty—will there­fore re­port to Mr Patrick un­til the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee has been put in place.'