The thought of a rise for T&T on the FI­FA world rank­ings to 81st or 80th may seem a bit far-fetched to date, but Col­in Wharfe, one of two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for the com­ing T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Elec­tions on April 13, is promis­ing this.

The cur­rent chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League told lis­ten­ers and view­ers dur­ing last Thurs­day’s CNC3 Morn­ing Shot pro­gramme that he had in-depth dis­cus­sions with the sport’s stake­hold­ers af­ter the first sea­son of the TT Pre­mier Foot­ball League, which fea­tures a Tier 1 and Tier 2 foot­ball leagues.

The dis­cus­sion was aimed at high­light­ing the short­falls and de­ter­min­ing how to strength­en the leagues. Among those dis­cus­sions were of­fi­cials from the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA, the gov­ern­ment, and the clubs, among oth­ers, and apart from just strength­en­ing the leagues, Wharfe said of crit­i­cal fo­cus was the coun­try’s se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team, which de­feat­ed the Unit­ed States in a cru­cial CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, but still bare­ly had any move­ment up the world rank­ings.

“Af­ter the end of the first sea­son in the TTPFL, we sat with FI­FA and all of the stake­hold­ers, the clubs, the pri­vate sec­tor, the gov­ern­ment, and so on, and the spe­cif­ic mark­er with re­spect to the per­for­mance on the field for the se­nior men’s na­tion­al team was to move over the next four years, 15 places from where they are now, that’s the mark­er.

“I in­ter­ro­gat­ed the se­nior men’s na­tion­al coach and said this thing looks very se­ri­ous be­cause you’ve just beat­en the Unit­ed States, and you al­most didn’t move. So I jok­ing­ly said, to get to 15 places you’ve got to beat Brazil.

“And he, An­gus Eve, was very com­fort­able tak­ing up the chal­lenge, that’s the first thing. The sec­ond thing is that the ab­solute pri­or­i­ty in terms of foot­ball is to en­sure that af­ter the March 23 game, the Cana­da game, is to en­sure that the se­nior men’s coach has all the tools and re­quire­ments that they need to be suc­cess­ful in qual­i­fy­ing for the FI­FA World Cup, that is pri­or­i­ty num­ber one.”

He not­ed fur­ther, “And you would have seen from the last sea­son, the team that beat the USA, well half of that team came from the TTPFL. The oth­er thing I would say in terms of pri­or­i­ty is that the statutes re­quired us to in­sti­tute ar­ti­cle 80 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is es­sen­tial, in ad­di­tion to mak­ing our­selves com­pli­ant, to make every mem­ber and the mem­bers of those mem­bers com­pli­ant al­so.”

Wharfe will be go­ing up against Kieron Ed­wards for the post of pres­i­dent when the elec­tions are held. Both men will be at­tempt­ing to take the reigns of lo­cal foot­ball man­age­ment when the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee makes its ex­it soon.

How­ev­er, Wharfe has had to deal with ru­mours that he will be the voice and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of FI­FA if he is elect­ed in­to of­fice. Yes­ter­day he sought to clear the air on this as­sump­tion, say­ing nei­ther Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee nor FI­FA was re­spon­si­ble for his con­test­ing the elec­tions.

He made it clear that any­one who is elect­ed in­to of­fice will be re­quired to re­port to FI­FA. Wharfe at­tempt­ed to lay it all on the ta­ble by say­ing he was asked by mem­ber clubs to go up.

Wharfe was the brain­child of the Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 Tour­na­ment two years ago, and due to the suc­cess­es he had, he was again asked to take on the role of run­ning a new top-flight lo­cal league, which had been un­suc­cess­ful in pre­vi­ous years as stake­hold­ers failed to agree unan­i­mous­ly on a com­mon path.

He said he was then asked to sub­mit a re­sume which went straight to the FI­FA and the rest was his­to­ry.

He jok­ing­ly said the thought of him be­ing the man on the ground for FI­FA was flat­ter­ing, but as­sured that any­one elect­ed in­to of­fice af­ter April 13 will have to op­er­ate un­der the frame­work of FI­FA.