Mike Awai, the for­mer AC Port-of-Spain Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er has come out in sup­port of FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad af­ter a 15-page doc­u­ment by the foot­ball’s mem­ber­ship on May 1, brand­ed him as in­com­pe­tent.

The mem­bers in a strong­ly word­ed doc­u­ment crit­i­cised Hadad and the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in every area of the man­age­ment of the sport, rang­ing from not hold­ing an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) to not pro­duc­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment, T&T’s prepa­ra­tion ahead of the T&T vs Guyana World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing match on March 25, op­er­at­ing with­out stand­ing com­mit­tees, the non-pay­ment of coach­es, play­ers and staff, to­geth­er with the ap­point­ments of na­tion­al coach­es for the re­spec­tive teams and the con­cerns raised in re­gards to the con­tact of se­nior na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick among many oth­er ar­eas.

The let­ter was copied to FI­FA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fat­ma Sam­ba Diouf Samoura and the oth­er mem­bers of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee in­clu­sive of Deputy chair­man and at­tor­ney Judy Daniel, for­mer banker Nigel Ro­mano and Trevor Gomez.

How­ev­er, Awai has called on the mem­bers to un­der­stand the de­ci­sion tak­en by FI­FA, which is aimed at sta­bil­is­ing lo­cal foot­ball fi­nan­cial­ly. He al­so sug­gest­ed that the mem­bers fo­cus on how they can help them­selves in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in­stead of com­plain­ing about the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee at every turn.

In March last year, the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body hand­ed the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball, as it felt the Unit­ed T&TFA which was led by William Wal­lace, had placed the sport in a state of bank­rupt­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty.

As a re­sult, it (FI­FA) pro­vid­ed the com­mit­tee with a man­date: 1. To run the TTFA’S dai­ly af­fairs; 2. To es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­mentable by the TTFA; 3. To re­view and amend the TTFA Statutes (and oth­er reg­u­la­tions where nec­es­sary) and to en­sure their com­pli­ance with the FI­FA Statutes and re­quire­ments be­fore du­ly sub­mit­ting them for ap­proval to the TTFA Con­gress; and 4. To or­gan­ise and to con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

The mem­bers in their let­ter ar­gued that none of the ar­eas list­ed by FI­FA has been achieved by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, and not­ed that the chair­man has, in fact, put the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion in an even more dire fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

Awai, in a list of ob­ser­va­tions, said: “I have gleaned the re­port/let­ter from the TTFA mem­ber­ship to FI­FA and wish to make the fol­low­ing ob­ser­va­tions. 1. FI­FA is be­ing told that it hired an in­com­pe­tent per­son as Chair­man of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.

2. The TTFA mem­ber­ship has not re­alised that FI­FA has tak­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to put TTFA back on a sound fi­nan­cial foot­ing. 3. The mem­ber­ship should fo­cus a bit on how it can help it­self in the present sit­u­a­tion. 4. At every turn the mem­ber­ship is com­plain­ing and/or crit­i­cis­ing the very body, the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, that has been ap­point­ed to bring foot­ball out of the morass the TTFA and foot­ball stake­hold­ers have found them­selves in. I un­der­stand the po­si­tion of the coach­es and Ad­min staff who have not been paid for a while. They are out of pock­et for some time. I al­so un­der­stand that the TTFA’s re­sources are lim­it­ed. I had hoped that the chair­man would have met with the rel­e­vant per­sons to re­solve the fi­nan­cial is­sues am­i­ca­bly.”

The let­ter by the mem­ber­ship comes on the heels of a cho­rus of calls by na­tion­al teams’ coach­es, play­ers and staff, among oth­ers, for pay­ment of salaries, match fees and stipend. Hadad yes­ter­day agreed to meet with the coach­es to dis­cuss is­sues raised.

The lo­cal foot­ball boss al­so agreed to meet with mem­ber­ship this week to iron out all con­cerns, though re­fut­ing some of the ac­cu­sa­tions made in the let­ter.

Mean­while, Awai al­so said he had hopes that the mem­ber­ship would have sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als to keep foot­ball afloat in T&T. He con­clud­ed by say­ing: “ Re­cal­i­bra­tion is nec­es­sary in­stead of be­ing com­bat­ive. Let us move for­ward in a pos­i­tive man­ner.”