Trinidad and To­ba­go women’s se­nior foot­ball team finds it­self in an­oth­er tail­spin af­ter Amer­i­can in­ter­im coach Con­stan­tine Kon­stin re­signed on Mon­day and was re­placed by for­mer So­ca War­riors skip­per Ken­wyne Jones, al­so in an in­ter­im po­si­tion.

In this re­gard, we wish Jones, a for­mer mem­ber of the 2006 Ger­many World Cup squad, the best in his en­deav­ours, since he has a huge task ahead of him. The women’s team is prepar­ing for the Con­ca­caf World Cup and Gold Cup Qual­i­fiers in Feb­ru­ary and Jones’ ini­tial stint will in­volve two friend­lies against Pana­ma on Oc­to­ber 21 and 25. He may thus be able to con­vince the TTFA, still man­aged by the Robert Hadad-led FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, that he has the where­with­al to take the team fur­ther.

Still, noth­ing seems cer­tain with the Hadad-led com­mit­tee and many foot­ball stake­hold­ers will ar­gue it is they who have brought the women’s team and gen­er­al op­er­a­tion of foot­ball to an­oth­er sad state. In­deed, re­ports sug­gest Kon­stin was forced out by the for­ti­tude of the play­ers and coach­ing staff re­belling over the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee’s de­ci­sion to ap­point him in the first place.

Kon­stin was a Fut­sal ex­pert with no ex­pe­ri­ence out­side that realm and un­der his tenure, the T&T Fut­sal team lost all four games at the 2021 Con­ca­caf Fut­sal Cham­pi­onships in May, scor­ing eight goals while con­ced­ing 25. The Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T and Women’s League of Foot­ball (WoLF) had voiced con­cern over his ap­point­ment and the lack of con­sul­ta­tion by the com­mit­tee be­fore se­lect­ing him. This was not the first time the com­mit­tee’s modus operan­di in hir­ing tech­ni­cal staff was ques­tioned ei­ther. Al­beit Kon­stin, him­self a sur­prise re­place­ment af­ter Welsh­man James Thomas stun­ning­ly quit ear­li­er this month, re­signed af­ter one day, it may now ac­tu­al­ly force the com­mit­tee to en­gage in a more rig­or­ous re­cruit­ment process that in­volves all stake­hold­ers.

On that note, we turn to the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee’s ap­proach since be­ing giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­ju­ve­nate T&T’s foot­ball. Ap­point­ed for a two-year pe­ri­od last March by FI­FA to im­ple­ment a debt re­pay­ment plan for the TTFA, there is no ev­i­dence that Mr Hadad’s team is any­where close to clear­ing that debt, last es­ti­mat­ed at $98.5 mil­lion. In fact, some debtors have com­plained about the tac­tics of the com­mit­tee as they seek to re­coup the monies owed to them. It is wor­thy to note here that when FI­FA ap­point­ed Hadad’s team to re­place the dis­solved William Wal­lace-led TTFA, the debt was es­ti­mat­ed at $50 mil­lion.

There is al­so grow­ing ev­i­dence that the com­mit­tee’s re­la­tion­ship with the sport’s stake­hold­ers is grow­ing fur­ther apart as they all seek to put T&T back on a steady foot­ball foot­ing. This is be­cause stake­hold­ers have ar­gued that the com­mit­tee op­er­ates out­side of its fi­nan­cial re­mit by in­flu­enc­ing de­ci­sions in the tech­ni­cal and oth­er ar­eas of the TTFA’s af­fairs which are, in turn, hurt­ing the at­tempts to re­vive the T&TFA. This lat­est fi­as­co with the women’s team is one such ex­am­ple.

Need­less to say, if Hadad and his team are un­able to do the job they were ap­point­ed to do ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, they should do the ho­n­ourable thing, like Kon­stin, and pass the ball on now.