New­ly ap­point­ed chair­man of the FI­FA-des­ig­nat­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC), Robert Hadad, was sur­prised by the call to head the unit but ex­pressed a gen­uine will­ing­ness to help put T&T foot­ball back on the right path. This af­ter the William Wal­lace-led T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) was dis­band­ed by FI­FA on March 17 af­ter it was elect­ed on No­vem­ber 24, 2019.

Hadad, who was placed in charge of T&T’s foot­ball with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, spoke pas­sion­ate­ly on i95.5fm Is­ports' Sat­ur­day pro­gramme with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on the road ahead.

“Foot­ball here in Trinidad and To­ba­go is huge, peo­ple love the game. It is a priv­i­lege to be in­volved in it, what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances I am com­ing in­to," said Hadad, who is one of three Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers of the HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies.

"I have watched the TTFA have many chal­lenges over the years. I know fans and peo­ple love foot­ball, it brings out a sense of pa­tri­o­tism in every­body. We long for an as­so­ci­a­tion, a na­tion­al team to be proud of, makes all of us feel good and I share that aim and that is why I agreed to help and that is what I want to achieve."

He is part of five-mem­ber NC ap­point­ed on Fri­day to take over the gov­er­nance of T&T foot­ball along with re­tired in­ter­na­tion­al banker Nigel Ro­mano, a Di­rec­tor and Part­ner at Moore T&T, who is al­so a for­mer chair­man of the JMMB Bank, as well as Amer­i­can-based At­tor­ney and En­vi­ron­men­tal Law Spe­cial­ist Judy Daniel. There are two mem­bers still to be named by FI­FA in the com­ing days.

<Sur­prise call from FI­FA>

Ac­cord­ing to Hadad, a cou­ple of weeks ago he got a phone call and was blunt­ly asked if he was in­ter­est­ed in be­ing a part of the NC?

"It took me back a bit and I sat down and said wow!" said Hadad hon­est­ly. "I do not know where this came from, I am guess­ing that they asked around. When they con­tact­ed me, I was tak­en aback and sur­prised. A cou­ple of friends of mines called me and said, some peo­ple are ask­ing about you, I didn’t know who it was."

How­ev­er, he didn't let the un­cer­tain­ty de­ter him from tak­ing up the chal­lenge with cur­rent pan­dem­ic nudg­ing him to­wards com­mit­ting to the post.

"This Covid-19 shook me up and I said, I re­al­ly should get in­volved and make a dif­fer­ence. I saw the pa­tri­o­tism and the ded­i­ca­tion of many mem­bers in our gov­ern­ment and peo­ple step­ping up to the plate and mak­ing an ef­fort and our health care work­ers," Hadad in­ter­nalised, say­ing to him­self: "You have a tal­ent, you have an abil­i­ty, why don’t you get in­volved in this and try to make a dif­fer­ence, and it drove me to the point, where I said 'Yes FI­FA', I am in­ter­est­ed.”

He was in­ter­viewed by about three to four peo­ple from FI­FA about his life and ca­reer, his in­volve­ment in foot­ball and if any af­fil­i­a­tions.

"I don’t know, how they picked me. A few peo­ple in FI­FA con­tact­ed me, they are from the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) and CON­CA­CAF, " said Hadad, who de­scribes him­self as a 're­al fam­i­ly man'.

<Hadad worked with Brown, Camps>

“I have been in the fam­i­ly busi­ness (Had­co, Light­house, Pep­per­corn and No­va), for the last 30 years. We start­ed our own busi­ness, my two broth­ers and I. Our fa­ther died at 49 and we had to de­cide to take care of our fam­i­ly.

"My de­gree is in ac­count­ing (Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies). I am a re­al Caribbean Boy. I love my coun­try and I love every­thing about T&T, said Hadad, who worked in ac­count­ing at Peat Mar­wick, be­fore the fam­i­ly busi­ness got go­ing in 1992. How­ev­er, it was while work­ing at Peat Mar­wick in 1990 he got in­to the ad­min­is­tra­tive side of the foot­ball.

"I worked with Ralph Brown and Ol­lie (Oliv­er) Camps at the end of the 'Road to Italy 1989'. I was an au­di­tor and my as­sign­ment was ac­tu­al­ly work­ing on the Road to World Cup Fund and do­ing the au­dit for them af­ter­wards, so it's kind of fun­ny, that 30-plus years af­ter­wards, I am here now, try­ing to make an im­pact, back in foot­ball and maybe turn things around a bit.

“I love foot­ball, I love sport, I am a re­al sports fa­nat­ic it is a big source of prob­lems with my wife and my­self. When we sit at night all I want to look at is sports, she wants to look at a ro­man­tic com­e­dy, every night it is the same sto­ry she falls asleep af­ter five min­utes," said Hadad said jok­ing­ly. he re­vealed that his youngest son piqued his in­ter­est in the sport lo­cal­ly. He is an as­pir­ing goal­keep­er with Queen's Park Crick­et Club foot­ball team and he made it on­to the na­tion­al team.

<Meet­ing with foot­ball stake­hold­ers>

Hadad, who is in­volved in a spon­sor­ship mech­a­nism with the Cam­boulay Foun­da­tion, has be­come the most pop­u­lar in­di­vid­ual in lo­cal foot­ball as for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers have al­ready reached out to him.

“My phone has been on fire. I spoke to Mr Wal­lace (William, the for­mer pres­i­dent) and I got a What­sapp mes­sage from Mr David John-Williams, telling me con­grat­u­la­tions. I kind of know all the play­ers here at stake, in the as­so­ci­a­tion. I have al­ready spo­ken with Ramesh Ramd­han (TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary).

"My ob­jec­tive is for peo­ple to recog­nise that I am not here favour­ing one side or the oth­er. I don’t know why we are here, I know it is not the fault of any one par­tic­u­lar ad­min­is­tra­tive group. I am guess­ing that we are here be­cause of many mis­takes along the road. I am just here to try with the team that I am in­volved in to make things bet­ter. The best way we could put TTFA back on the right track,” said Hadad.

He ex­plained that “We came to­geth­er al­ready, in­di­vid­u­al­ly Nigel Ro­mano and my­self, Judy and my­self, have spo­ken a few times. We are in touch with each oth­er but at the end of the day, we need to de­cide, when those oth­er two peo­ple come on, what are the as­sets of those two peo­ple the bot­tom line for us is that over the next two weeks we can­not do much, we are go­ing to be strapped down like every­body else in our homes. "FI­FA did what it had to do for what­ev­er rea­sons. I am just see­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put T&T foot­ball back on the right track."

<NC now run­ning TTFA day-to-day af­fairs>

Mov­ing for­ward un­der FI­FA, Hadad cit­ed that the NC has a clear re­mit, to run the TTFA dai­ly af­fairs, analyse the cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion with a quick debt re­pay­ment plan and de­cide ex­act­ly how they are get­ting there, where are they get­ting this mon­ey to cov­er each ex­pense. "We will look­ing at the statutes and the reg­u­la­tions so that we can com­ply with the FI­FA stat­ues be­cause that is very im­por­tant and then we have to or­gan­ise an elec­tion,” ex­plained Hadad.

Hadad re­vealed he is not in­ter­est­ed in any re­mu­ner­a­tion for this job: “I made it clear when I took this job that I am not in­ter­est­ed in any pay­ment. Out­lined in the con­tract is a stipend for ex­pens­es and what­ev­er, but to be quite frank with you, I am so hap­py in my life and my skin. I love where I am in my life and I am just ready to give back to my coun­try and at this time of need.”

<Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is key in the process>

Hadad went on to touch on the im­por­tance of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, on the TTFA of­fice, meet­ing with in­di­vid­u­als that will aid in get­ting T&T back on the right path.

“Every­body has to re­spect that (con­fi­den­tial­i­ty). We must keep the mat­ters of FI­FA be­tween us and FI­FA and what is to come out to the wider pop­u­la­tion will come out. But at the end of the day, we are not here to dig up any bones that have been buried over the years and go back and fig­ure out, who did what and who did that. We are not in­ter­est­ed in that, we are in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing a po­si­tion of the day and mak­ing a bet­ter or­gan­i­sa­tion for all of us to be proud of,” said Hadad.

<Seek­ing ad­vice from Guyana's Url­ing>

He ex­plained that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion at the mo­ment with the of­fices of the TTFA will re­main un­changed and that he plans to reach out to the for­mer head of the NC in Guyana Clin­ton Url­ing to get some in­for­ma­tion, so I am plan­ning to spend a lot of time on Skype or zoom but we are not go­ing to the of­fice be­cause it is il­le­gal and we have to re­spect that. So we in hold­ing pat­tern for a cou­ple of weeks,” said Hadad, who added that all con­tracts giv­en by TTFA will be up­held.

“I am guess­ing we have to main­tain the con­tracts with every­body, we can­not walk in there and can­cel a con­tract of any­body but we will have to read the con­tracts. We will have to find out ex­act­ly how long these con­tracts are for and have to meet with the coach­es. We're prob­a­bly go­ing to have to meet with every­body, the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor and the rest of the mem­bers of the staff and de­cide what is the best way for foot­ball. But I am clear in my mind that we need to di­vide the busi­ness in­to the day-to-day run­ning, clean­ing up of the ac­counts payable, the tech­ni­cal side. All of that will be de­cid­ed in the next cou­ple of months.

Hadad said, "I am go­ing to fol­low the guide­lines of FI­FA. I am not a 'yes man' so I will chal­lenge FI­FA. Me and my team we will chal­lenge them be­cause we know the dy­nam­ics of our coun­try, we know what Trin­bag­o­nions want and we are go­ing to try to do our very best.”