Dear Ed­i­tor,

Fol­low­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) on Sun­day, which was con­duct­ed by the FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC), there are more ques­tions than an­swers.

The most alarm­ing state­ment is an ap­par­ent re­duc­tion in as­set val­ue of the Home of Foot­ball (HOF) due to doubt over the own­er­ship of the land used to build the project.

What has Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the NC and his com­mit­tee mem­bers Ms Judy Daniel (Deputy Chair­per­son) and Mr Nigel Ro­mano and Trevor Nicholas Gomez (mem­bers) have been do­ing for the last 18 months to on­ly now de­clare that a “ma­te­r­i­al un­cer­tain­ty ex­ists which may cast sig­nif­i­cant doubt on the TTFA’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue as a go­ing con­cern.”

If this sit­u­a­tion is con­firmed at the Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) which is set for 14 days from Sun­day, then the as­so­ci­a­tion can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate and liq­ui­da­tion is in­evitable.

Sure­ly, the land must be part of the TTFA as­set oth­er­wise FI­FA would not have fund­ed the project as their own rules dic­tate.

If it is pure­ly a case of ty­ing up loose ends on the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­u­men­ta­tion which I would have thought was some­thing Mr Hadad and his team should have ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly up­on their ap­point­ment.

It is al­so iron­ic to note that the 2022 bud­get is up for ap­proval on the EGM agen­da not to men­tion the re­cent two-year con­tracts giv­en to Na­tion­al Coach­ing staff.

The im­por­tant and ur­gent ques­tion for the NC to an­swer is whether the as­so­ci­a­tion is now of­fi­cial­ly in­sol­vent or not as they have had 18 months to ad­dress the is­sue.

On­ly re­cent­ly Mr Hadad and Mr Gomez was on i95.5FM telling the host An­dre Bap­tiste that they were work­ing on three so­lu­tions to raise fund­ing us­ing the HOF which would elim­i­nate the debt is­sue but has now re­duced its val­ue sub­stan­tial­ly to the verge of in­sol­ven­cy.

Hope­ful­ly, the NC will clar­i­fy the true po­si­tion at the EGM on Oc­to­ber 10 and re­verse their gloomy out­look ac­cord­ing­ly.

The re­duc­tion in as­set val­ue of the HOF by the NC is alarm­ing and sure­ly dis­re­spect­ful to the T&T Gov­ern­ment who sup­port­ed and in­au­gu­rat­ed the project open­ing with a fan­fare of eu­pho­ria and pride which was en­dorsed by the Prime Min­is­ter and the FI­FA pres­i­dent him­self in glow­ing terms.

Like all oth­er foot­ball stake­hold­ers I will wait on the EGM for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

Mike Berry

Foot­ball In­ter­me­di­ary (The FA)

UK