Dear Ed­i­tor

In the cur­rent wor­ry­ing dis­pute be­tween the elect­ed body of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), bet­ter known as Unit­ed TTFA, and FI­FA, a new twist threat­ens to plunge our foot­ball in­to un­fath­omable depths.

While the sud­den fir­ing of the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed board de­served some de­gree of out­rage, many peo­ple with­in foot­ball could ac­cept this de­ci­sion as a means to an end.

Unit­ed TTFA then de­cid­ed to chal­lenge this FI­FA de­ci­sion by tak­ing the dis­pute to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion (CAS) in Switzer­land. Win­ning such a case would have placed the al­ready shaky re­la­tion­ship be­tween FI­FA and TTFA in­to the mat­ri­mo­ni­al cat­e­go­ry of ir­rev­o­ca­ble dif­fer­ences. Any as­sis­tance from FI­FA in man­ag­ing TTFA's debts would have fall­en on deaf ears. But at least we could see that jus­tice pre­vailed.

But this lat­est de­ci­sion by Unit­ed TTFA and its le­gal team is com­plete­ly in­com­pre­hen­si­ble.  

First­ly, T&T courts have no ju­ris­dic­tion over FI­FA. Sec­ond­ly, FI­FA statutes for­bid mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions to ad­dress mat­ters through lo­cal courts and mem­bers agree to ad­dress all such mat­ters to CAS. The penal­ty for non-com­pli­ance with these rules is a sus­pen­sion.

So what is Unit­ed TTFA's endgame? If they win in Port-of-Spain and re­take their po­si­tions in TTFA, what have they achieved? T&T foot­ball will be an out­cast. Unit­ed TTFA will be in charge of an emp­ty of­fice, with no in­come, no staff and a $50 mil­lion debt.

My ques­tion is: who gave Unit­ed TTFA the man­date to turn T&T in­to a foot­ball pari­ah? Did the 49 TTFA board mem­bers vote for this? Were they even con­sult­ed? Did Unit­ed TTFA dis­cuss their in­ten­tions with the Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe?

I have seen Unit­ed TTFA mem­bers and their sup­port­ers talk about the fight for jus­tice. Some have even dared to liken their dis­pute to those of Uri­ah But­ler, Nel­son Man­dela and Rosa Parks. They talk of fight­ing the cor­rup­tion of colo­nial­ist bul­lies.

But in re­al­i­ty, Unit­ed TTFA has crossed the moral thresh­old of the fight for jus­tice.

Can it be jus­tice for a hand­ful of mid­dle-aged ad­min­is­tra­tors to take away the op­por­tu­ni­ties and dreams of tal­ent­ed young foot­ballers un­able to play in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball for an un­de­ter­mined num­ber of years? Can it be de­mo­c­ra­t­ic for these few to take a uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion that will af­fect all 49 board mem­bers with­out a vote?

I be­lieve in fight­ing for jus­tice. I was in­stru­men­tal in the So­ca War­riors fight against Jack Warn­er in the World Cup bonus dis­pute. At the time it was un­think­able that a bunch of foot­ballers could win against the FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent. The play­ers knew that their fight would re­sult in black­list­ing from the na­tion­al team but it was their per­son­al choice just as it would be their per­son­al penal­ty. Their bat­tle nev­er threat­ened T&T foot­ball.

Where were the mem­bers of Unit­ed TTFA in that fight for jus­tice? Some of them were work­ing with Warn­er so maybe jus­tice wasn't so im­por­tant then.

If Unit­ed TTFA feels jus­ti­fied to take on FI­FA in a T&T court, I say they should do it but they should do it as in­di­vid­u­als. Let them win their vic­to­ry and at­tain the moral high ground but don't bring down T&T foot­ball in the process.

Kevin Har­ri­son

Op­er­a­tions Di­rec­tor

Cen­tral FC