Mark Bas­sant

No FI­FA ban for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, at least for the time be­ing.

When the 70th FI­FA Con­gress con­vened at nine o'clock Fri­day morn­ing, FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no said there was noth­ing to ad­dress un­der the agen­da of ex­pul­sion and sus­pen­sions and moved on. This an­nounce­ment came at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9.17 am.

It put to rest con­cerns for many months that Trinidad and To­ba­go would be banned by FI­FA fol­low­ing the court ac­tion tak­en by the oust­ed Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive led by William Wal­lace ear­li­er this year - af­ter they were giv­en the boot and a FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee im­ple­ment­ed in March, head­ed by Robert Hadad, to over­see a re­struc­tur­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Well placed foot­ball in­sid­ers told Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this morn­ing that FI­FA may on­ly con­tem­plate their next move af­ter the Oc­to­ber 9 court mat­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go

Wal­lace’s team re­fused to drop the lo­cal court ac­tion chal­leng­ing the FI­FA de­ci­sion to send in the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Team by the dead­line of Wednes­day of this week giv­en to them by the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport. This had prompt­ed con­cerns that the TTFA could face a ban.

Ad­dress­ing FI­FA’s non-ac­tion dur­ing Fri­day’s con­gress, how­ev­er, Wal­lace said the mat­ter was far from over.

”We knew that Trinidad and To­ba­go was not on the agen­da, but of course per­sons with their var­i­ous agen­das made pub­lic state­ments to the con­trary. The mat­ter is far from over and the ball is still in FI­FA's court to act as they deem fit af­ter the con­gress.” - With re­port­ing by Gyasi Mer­rique