Mike Awai, a stake­hold­er in lo­cal foot­ball, is urg­ing the mem­ber­ship of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to not ap­prove the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial ac­counts of the TTFA when it is pre­sent­ed for dis­cus­sion and even­tu­al vote at the TTFA Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) on Sun­day.

Awai, the for­mer AC Port of Spain Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er, has been an­gered by a Guardian Me­dia re­port on Wednes­day that con­firmed that the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion is in­sol­vent, and is now call­ing on Robert Hadad, the chair­man of a FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to get a cer­tifi­cate of ti­tle for the land hous­ing the con­tro­ver­sial "Home of Foot­ball" (HoF) in Bal­main, Cou­va that will be ac­cept­ed by the au­di­tors.

Awai said for such a busi­ness­man, a cer­tifi­cate of that na­ture would be at his fin­ger­tips or at the call of his phone.  

De­ter­min­ing the sol­ven­cy of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion will be done at the EGM. At present, the TTFA is in need of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials of the as­so­ci­a­tion to be ap­proved if it is to re­ceived monies from FI­FA.

The EGM be­came the next step af­ter AGM de­ferred dis­cus­sions on the is­sue of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment and the lease for the Home of Foot­ball at the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) of the TTFA on Sep­tem­ber 26. At that meet­ing, the ac­counts were pre­sent­ed mi­nus the val­ue for the land that hous­es the Home of Foot­ball, said to be es­ti­mat­ed at $42 mil­lion.

In Ju­ly, Hadad is­sued a state­ment that put the TTFA debt at $98.5 mil­lion.

Lead­ing the dis­cus­sions were the Vet­er­an Foot­ball Foun­da­tion of T&T (VF­FOTT) and T&T Pro League cam­paign­ers W Con­nec­tion Foot­ball Club, both of which penned let­ters to the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee be­fore and af­ter the AGM, de­mand­ing an­swers on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, David John-Williams, a for­mer pres­i­dent of TTFA who was re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that ap­proved au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial reached in­to the hands of the FI­FA in 2018 and 2019 for the first time since 2008, has promised to of­fer a state­ment af­ter the EGM. John-Williams is al­so re­spon­si­ble for se­cur­ing the land for the Home of Foot­ball from the gov­ern­ment.

In the mean­while, Awai who has been at­tempt­ing to find an­swers for the foot­ball quag­mire, was livid when he saw state­ments from the lo­cal foot­ball boss and said on Wednes­day: “What is wrong with Hadad? He took 18 months to fig­ure out that he does not have a plan. What has he been do­ing? What is his mantra?

"Isn’t it to fix the con­sti­tu­tion, to pre­pare fresh elec­tion and have a debt re­pay­ment plan? I am go­ing to send an email to all the stake­hold­ers be­cause I have the whole list­ing of them.

"I am go­ing to make an ap­peal to the stake­hold­ers, not to ap­prove the au­dit­ed ac­counts be­cause the TTFA is not in­sol­vent.

"Eigh­teen (18) months and we can’t get a cer­tifi­cate of ti­tle, 18 months and we can’t get a pro­pos­al for the re­pay­ment plan and now all of a sud­den, af­ter 18 months he is now ask­ing the gov­ern­ment to talk, he could have done that a year ago and they might have done some­thing small for us in the bud­get.”

Awai, the own­er and founder of the FUT­GOF Foot­ball Acad­e­my, has been avoid­ing calls to en­ter the fray ahead of the com­ing elec­tions of the TTFA. How­ev­er, he has been bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the work done by Hadad and his com­mit­tee mem­bers to date, say­ing they have not achieved a sin­gle item of their man­date by FI­FA.  

A week ago, Awai came up with two the­o­ries why the NC would want the TTFA to be in­sol­vent, and one en­tailed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of avoid­ing the huge debt that has crip­pled lo­cal foot­ball for many years.  

Sun­day’s EGM is ex­pect­ed to be in­tense but Hadad is as­sur­ing mem­bers that an­swers to their ques­tions will come but just not from him. Apart from re­veal­ing the fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the TTFA, Hadad al­so said that the in­de­pen­dent au­di­tors will be the ones to pro­vide the an­swers to the ques­tions of the mem­bers.

Awai be­lieves that if the mem­ber­ship ap­proves the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials, they will in­di­rect­ly be giv­ing up their pow­er and con­trol of the as­sets of the TTFA.