The Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has writ­ten to its par­ent body FI­FA dis­tanc­ing its self from me­dia com­ments made by the em­bat­tled for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Aus­tain Jack Warn­er on Mon­day and Tues­day.

In its let­ter to FI­FA and ad­dressed FI­FA's Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura, the TTFA through its new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent William Wal­lace wrote: " Dear Madame Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary and Friend, Greet­ings from the new­ly elect­ed of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, it is with the great­est con­cern as the new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the TTFA, I write to com­mu­ni­cate to FI­FA our re­jec­tion of claims be­ing made with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go and as well in the In­ter­na­tion­al press that the new TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion has come in­to of­fice with the sup­port of for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Austin Jack Warn­er.

This nar­ra­tive was spread by par­ties un­known pri­or to the TTFA elec­tions of Sun­day 24, No­vem­ber 2019, and has grown in in­ten­si­ty since that date. This ru­mor has gained trac­tion in ma­jor part due to the un­so­licit­ed sup­port and com­ments of the for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent in the Trinidad and To­ba­go me­dia

On be­half of the of­fi­cers of the TTFA and my­self I as­sure you, the pres­i­dent and mem­bers of FI­FA, that there has been, is not, and nev­er will be a con­nec­tion be­tween the for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent go­ing for­ward from Sun­day 24, No­vem­ber 2019."

Mean­while, dur­ing one of his me­dia in­ter­views Warn­er said, "When I was there, this coun­try went to sev­en World Cups—two U-20, two U-17 boys, two U-17 girls and a FI­FA Cup in Ger­many—so if I was a bad man, what­ev­er I was do­ing, we went to a World Cup sev­en times.

"Let there be more bad men like Jack Warn­er. In 2005, when we qual­i­fied, this coun­try has nev­er been unit­ed like that so if I am a 'bad man' then let 'bad men' run foot­ball."

Speak­ing on Is­ports Tues­day on i95.5fm with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste, the for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent said that he was has been in­volved in foot­ball in many ar­eas lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and was wide­ly ac­cred­it­ed with en­sur­ing that T&T was able to qual­i­fy for its first and on­ly World Cup in 2006.

On Sun­day, at the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) William Wal­lace was elect­ed as pres­i­dent by the del­e­gates, de­feat­ing the in­cum­bent David John-Williams 26-20.

Warn­er said, "I am sur­prised that Wal­lace did not get more votes be­cause I think that David John-Williams mis­un­der­stood, FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF col­leagues and even the Prime Min­is­ter, is that foot­ball is on the field of play. Peo­ple want to see re­sults, they want to see suc­cess­es, spon­sors want to come in and you could build a house of foot­ball four times in one year, that does not equate to suc­cess on the field of play."

Re­spond­ing to Wal­lace an­nounce­ment about shut­ting down of the 'Home of Foot­ball' he said, "The rea­sons giv­en for that was to do an au­dit of the foot­ball house and to make sure that noth­ing is lost in the tran­si­tion and that the clo­sure is tem­po­rary. If those are the rea­sons, I have no prob­lem with that, but it must nev­er be treat­ed like the Cou­va’s Chil­dren hos­pi­tal."

Warn­er said, "I am bi­ased against those who have killed foot­ball, I am bi­ased against those who have tak­en this coun­try to 147th in the rank­ings, I am bi­ased against those who sit qui­et­ly by and al­low CON­CA­CAF to kill World Cup foot­ball qual­i­fi­ca­tion by hav­ing an elit­ist for­mat. I am against those things and more."

The for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent who is banned from the sport for life by FI­FA said, "Time will tell, I am not go­ing to make any pre­judg­ment on Kei­th Look Loy and how he op­er­ates or An­tho­ny Har­ford or any­body else. Time will tell, I know guys who were one way be­fore and elec­tion, even in pol­i­tics and once they get in­to po­si­tion, they are dif­fer­ent, pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly so let us wait and see and not make any pre­judg­ment."

Warn­er be­lieves that Den­nis Lawrence should re­main in the job but an over­seas coach brought to work with him and that the gov­ern­ment of the day can fund the ex­er­cise. He was though clear about an­oth­er mat­ter, warn­ing FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF.

Re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle writ­ten stat­ing that Jack Warn­er is in­flu­enc­ing William Wal­lace Unit­ed team, Warn­er said, "I am dis­mis­sive of that, and I am say­ing if even that was the case, and it means, and by the way, that is not the case, and it means that is the be­gin­ning of the way to lift foot­ball in the coun­try so be it, what’s wrong with that, I have been in foot­ball for 30 years at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el and I still be­lieve that any­body who wants to ask me some­thing in foot­ball, I must an­swer them and ad­vise them, if they come to me yes, if not so be it.

"I know that they are pet­ty enough to do that, FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF as well, but if they do that, it will be the be­gin­ning of the end for both of them, if they are spite­ful es­pe­cial­ly CON­CA­CAF and go af­ter the ad­min­is­tra­tion here, I swear to you to­day they will not last four years, nei­ther of them. There will be a price they have to pay, take that at my word."