Foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body — FI­FA is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the ac­tions of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) gen­er­al mem­ber­ship, as well as the rul­ing by the Court of Ap­peal of T&T, with a pos­si­ble in­tent to re­move the sus­pen­sion hand­ed down on Sep­tem­ber 24 and ac­cept the TTFA back in­to the fold of the FI­FA fam­i­ly.

FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura de­liv­ered this in­for­ma­tion in a let­ter on Wednes­day, point­ed out that on Oc­to­ber 23, the Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux over­turned a rul­ing by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in made on Oc­to­ber 13 to recog­nise the Unit­ed T&TFA's team of William Wal­lace (pres­i­dent) and vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick, as the le­git­i­mate man­agers of foot­ball in T&T.

The TTFA had chal­lenged a de­ci­sion by the FI­FA in March to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to re­place the Wal­lace-led T&TFA for putting the coun­try's foot­ball on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy. The T&TFA first went to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land, be­fore de­cid­ing to chal­lenge the mat­ter in the lo­cal High Court, which was a vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes, cit­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al bias at the CAS.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Bereaux con­clud­ed that the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion pre­scribes that all dis­putes be­tween it­self and FI­FA should be dealt with by CAS.

He said: “The fact that such a pro­vi­sion is en­shrined in the TTFA’s con­sti­tu­tion means that the TTFA and its ex­ec­u­tive are bound to com­ply. The re­sult is that the fil­ing of these pro­ceed­ings was a breach of the TTFA’s con­sti­tu­tion.”

Archie, on the oth­er hand, said “It was nei­ther pru­dent case man­age­ment nor an eco­nom­i­cal de­ploy­ment of ju­di­cial time and re­sources to at­tempt to fi­nal­ly de­ter­mine the sub­stan­tive is­sues and to de­liv­er a judge­ment less than a week be­fore the sched­uled hear­ing of the in­ter­locu­to­ry ap­peal...Zeal is com­mend­able but it must not ob­scure the need for cau­tion,” Archie said.

In the judge­ment, it was de­ter­mined that the lit­i­ga­tion con­tra­vened the Ju­di­cia­ry’s Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules, as it was served on FI­FA via email when Swiss law does not per­mit such a method for ser­vice of a law­suit.

The rul­ing was fol­lowed by an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 25, at which the TTFA mem­bers agreed to drop all the court mat­ters with the FI­FA if the TTFA were to be ac­cept­ed as a mem­ber again, and there­by be al­lowed to play in all FI­FA-sanc­tioned events.

The TTFA was al­so re­quired to ac­cept the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee as the or­gan­i­sa­tion to run the af­fairs of the sport in T&T, as well as bring its statutes in line with that of the FI­FA.

Samoura in a let­ter to Robert Hadad, chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee dat­ed No­vem­ber 4, ac­knowl­edged the at­tempts made the sport's mem­ber­ship and the court of ap­peal, say­ing: " FI­FA ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the de­ci­sion of the T&T Court of Ap­peal in the case to which FI­FA was a re­spon­dent par­ty. In this con­text, the de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal ruled that the for­mer lead­er­ship of the TTFA had act­ed un­law­ful­ly by ap­peal­ing to a lo­cal court to con­test the ap­point­ment by FI­FA of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee for the TTFA."

She added: "In ad­di­tion, the Court of Ap­peal stressed that in ac­cor­dance with art. 57 par. 1 of the FI­FA Statutes and art. 67 of the TTFA statutes, the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) is the on­ly recog­nised path to re­solve such dis­pute. Fur­ther­more, the FI­FA ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­knowl­edges the re­ceipt of writ­ten proof that on 25 Oc­to­ber 2020 a meet­ing was held among the TTFA mem­bers. In this con­text, we du­ly take note that the mem­bers of the TTFA ex­pressed them­selves and de­cid­ed that “(…) the way for­ward for the TTFA is: for the TTFA to ful­ly com­ply with its oblig­a­tions as a mem­ber of FI­FA, recog­nis­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, and; bring­ing its own statutes in line with the FI­FA Statutes, and; to ful­ly co­op­er­ate with the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in the ful­fil­ment of its man­date as stat­ed in FI­FA´s let­ter of March 17th, 2020; be it fur­ther re­solved that all court mat­ters ex­ist­ing be­tween the TTFA and FI­FA shall be im­me­di­ate­ly brought to a stop”.

Ac­cord­ing to Samoura, FI­FA wel­comes both de­ci­sions and is as­sess­ing the mat­ter in­ter­nal­ly, promis­ing that an up­date will be pro­vid­ed in due course.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (CON­CA­CAF) which made it known it want­ed T&T in its main draw for the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup on Sep­tem­ber 28, lat­er gave the T&TFA un­til De­cem­ber 18 to sort out its mat­ters with the FI­FA or miss the tour­na­ment in 2021.

FI­FA lat­er al­so gave the FI­FA T&TFA the same dead­line to drop all the court mat­ters against it and bring its con­sti­tu­tion in line with FI­FA's, if T&T was to have a chance to con­test the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.