Fol­low­ing my col­umn last week, sev­er­al read­ers asked me if I sup­port­ed the cur­rent T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) ad­min­is­tra­tion as I ap­peared to not sup­port the pre­vi­ous one. I chuck­led to my­self as this episode with FI­FA has noth­ing to do with whom I sup­port or don’t sup­port, I sim­ply sup­port what is fair.

It is in­ter­est­ing to note how­ev­er that the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA is re­ceiv­ing out­stand­ing sup­port from their mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions. Then, there are those mem­bers who no mat­ter what, will find fault and crit­i­cise sim­ply be­cause they don’t want the par­tic­u­lar ex­ec­u­tive to run the sport.

If you be­long to any or­gan­i­sa­tion, there will cer­tain­ly be a few in­di­vid­u­als who try their best to find fault with the ex­ec­u­tive sim­ply be­cause they may not get their way. But gen­er­al­ly, as one source point­ed out, “Those in­di­vid­u­als are haters” and one has to ig­nore their rant­i­ngs and do what is best.

One body that in­ter­est­ing­ly sup­ports FI­FA’s es­tab­lish­ment of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to steer the fi­nan­cial and statu­to­ry af­fairs of the TTFA is the Board of the T&T Pro League. On one hand, a re­lease from the Pro League had in­di­cat­ed that it had unan­i­mous­ly ac­cept­ed the de­ci­sion by FI­FA but then, the ru­mours be­gan to make the rounds that it was not unan­i­mous. Whether or not unan­i­mous, like in all de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tions when it was put to the vote, the ma­jor­i­ty of Pro League clubs had vot­ed in favour of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Mean­while, when one looks at the clubs that make up the Pro League, it is not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why. Let’s be hon­est, the Pro League has strug­gled over the years for sus­tain­able crowds, fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, ad­e­quate spon­sor­ship, mar­ket­ing and brand­ing and prop­er di­rec­tion.

As one of my What­sApp chat group mem­bers sent in a mes­sage, “Pro League games still on de­spite COVID-19 fears as there would be no more than 25 peo­ple and they can sit 20 feet apart”. Un­for­tu­nate, but it does make you sit up and think.

The Pro League has had and con­tin­ues to have cred­i­ble in­di­vid­u­als with­in their midst. I have no doubt that their heart is in foot­ball and they see this takeover by FI­FA as a wel­comed op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to lean on the world gov­ern­ing body to re­ceive some fund­ing to ad­dress the needs of the League. Fund­ing is good, but it is ob­vi­ous the League can­not see this fund­ing com­ing from the TTFA; even if they get the mon­ey, the work on­ly then be­gins.

Who is go­ing to re­brand and mar­ket the league? Where is the spon­sor­ship mon­ey com­ing from be­sides FI­FA? How will the com­mu­ni­ties be en­ticed? Are they go­ing to con­tin­ue play­ing in big, emp­ty sta­di­ums?

I gen­uine­ly hope the league walks the talk they are preach­ing. The time for mud­sling­ing, char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tions and ego­tism in our foot­ball should be kicked out and we move to work as one; nice words I am sure, but I of­ten won­der, how many of them can re­al­ly hold their heads up high and be true to their words?

It is quite ob­vi­ous that with the sup­port the oust­ed ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA is a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of, they feel hard done by and quite frankly, it re­mains dif­fi­cult to not agree with them. They have al­ready is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to bat­tle the mighty FI­FA through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in Switzer­land, of­ten re­ferred to as the Supreme Court of sport­ing dis­putes. Quite a few peo­ple in foot­ball have told me that the TTFA doesn’t stand a chance. I cer­tain­ly won’t doubt them as FI­FA seems to be on sol­id ground and when they are not, they threat­en an as­so­ci­a­tion by de­bar­ring them from all lev­els of foot­ball - you just can’t seem to win any bat­tle with FI­FA.

It is an ex­treme­ly sad sit­u­a­tion as the de­ci­sion to in­state a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is not on­ly pre­ma­ture but goes com­plete­ly against the grain of a new­ly elect­ed de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion that was not giv­en am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to try and suc­ceed. The oth­er un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion fac­ing the TTFA is that they do not have and will fail to have sup­port from the oth­er Caribbean na­tions as they them­selves could face a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. So they will, as a friend of mine says, “Eat their bis­cuit and shut their mouth”.

You see, say what­ev­er you wish about Austin Jack Warn­er - love him or loathe him, this could have nev­er hap­pened in his era. Caribbean foot­ball was strong; the re­gion was unit­ed and the 31 votes we had were not frag­ment­ed.

But un­for­tu­nate­ly, it does not ap­pear so to­day and when I read the pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union mak­ing com­ments about how dif­fi­cult it will be to ad­e­quate­ly ad­min­is­ter foot­ball in T&T, I won­dered whether he checked with the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive about their plans. More im­por­tant­ly, where was he over the last four years? I sup­pose he ought to be guard­ed with his words.

Some burn­ing ques­tions re­main at the fore­front of this bru­tal saga: if FI­FA was so con­cerned with T&T foot­ball, why didn’t they send in their fi­nan­cial wiz­ards to work with the TTFA? How come FI­FA’s fact-find­ing team said to the TTFA not to both­er to use the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ as a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sure? Did the TTFA not say to the mis­sion that the debt will be cleared in two to three years? What is the re­al rea­son FI­FA re­moved the ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA? And why is there a need for new elec­tions fol­low­ing the work of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee?

As I’ve stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, this takeover by the high and mighty stinks to the ex­treme. But I ad­mire the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive for bat­tling against what is un­just and re­lent­less­ly pur­su­ing what they be­lieve in. Will they win their bat­tle at CAS? On­ly time will tell.

But if they don’t, as Mur­phy’s law goes, any­thing that can go wrong will go wrong. A painful re­al­i­ty in­deed.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.