The op­tion of dis­solv­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is be­fore Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad and his mem­bers, as at­tempts con­tin­ue to deal with a debt that has ren­dered the as­so­ci­a­tion in­sol­vent.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has been sad­dled with a $98.5 mil­lion debt which mi­nus­es the cost for the Home of Foot­ball (HOF) in Cou­va, said to be in the re­gion of $42 mil­lion, for which Hadad came un­der fire at the TTFA's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) on Sep­tem­ber 26.

In 2020, the sport's world gov­ern­ing body - FI­FA, in­stalled Hadad and his team as a re­place­ment for a du­ly elect­ed Unit­ed TTFA that was led by William Wal­lace. That move was made based on a be­lief that the TTFA was on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Hadad in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports ad­mit­ted that the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion is in­sol­vent, but made it clear it was not some­thing they're look­ing at right now.

Asked if dis­so­lu­tion was an op­tion avail­able to him no, he said: "Ab­solute­ly, it is an op­tion, but that is not some­thing we're look­ing at right now.

"We're look­ing at oth­er meth­ods of rais­ing the fund­ing and some sort of process to re­pay that debt, ei­ther bor­row­ing or ad­vance that some­body would give us. Or some­body gives us a do­na­tion.

"There are many ways to deal with this debt is­sue, but it's not go­ing to hap­pen overnight, so we need the gov­ern­ment in­volved, we need FI­FA in­volved and we're hav­ing ac­tive dis­cus­sions with every­one. Maybe con­tri­bu­tions from a third par­ty or mul­ti­ple third par­ties, maybe con­tri­bu­tions from dif­fer­ent places, dif­fer­ent sources.

"There is no doubt that we have the Home of Foot­ball. The HOF does have a val­ue, and we have the land that the gov­ern­ment has promised to lease to the as­so­ci­a­tion but that lease needs to be per­fect­ed.

"And at the end of the day, it is still a lease, we don't own the land."

The HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies di­rec­tor on Mon­day wel­comed the gov­ern­ment's con­tri­bu­tion to sports in its bud­get, say­ing apart from em­brac­ing the re­turn of in­ter­na­tion­al sports in the new year, he now needs to talk to the Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe as a means of clear­ing the ex­ist­ing debt.

"I would love to have a meet­ing with the min­is­ter so that we could talk about where foot­ball is go­ing be­cause we still have our debt and we still have to ad­dress the debt re­pay­ment and we need gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion in that and the sup­port of the Sports Com­pa­ny (SporTT) and the Min­istry of Sports.

"We need clear­er pic­tures of where we're go­ing with it, we def­i­nite­ly go­ing to need to do that as soon as pos­si­ble.

We're go­ing to need gov­ern­ment sup­port al­so if we're go­ing to re­turn to some sort of League for­mat. We've been do­ing some work on a uni­fied league with a Di­vi­sion one and two and we're still in the process of mak­ing pre­sen­ta­tions to stake­hold­ers, but we're again go­ing to need the gov­ern­ment's sup­port, as they have done in the past be­cause the teams are go­ing to need some spon­sor­ship from cor­po­rate Trinidad."

The process for the start of the pro­posed uni­fied league is said to be near com­ple­tion, Hadad said.

Fol­low­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion of the League by FI­FA, the NC chair­man said he has al­ready giv­en it his stamp of ap­proval to the idea and it is now be­fore his com­mit­tee mem­bers to do the same. He ex­plained that once ap­proval is giv­en by his mem­bers, the pro­pos­al of the league will be sent to the mem­ber­ship to sign off on.

Mean­while, Hadad faces mount­ing pres­sure to of­fer ex­pla­na­tions on ques­tions from the mem­ber­ship on the fi­nan­cial state of the TTFA and to say why the cost of the land that hous­es the Home of Foot­ball was left off the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment.

Hadad at the AGM, de­ferred those ques­tions to an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) to be held 14 days af­ter that AGM on Sep­tem­ber 26 which is on Sun­day (Oc­to­ber 10). And quizzed on an up­date ahead of the EGM, Hadad said: "All the ques­tions the stake­hold­ers have asked about the fi­nan­cial state­ment have been for­ward­ed to the au­di­tors, and the au­di­tors will now have to ad­dress those is­sues with the stake­hold­ers.

"From where I sit, I would like to make just one state­ment, an au­dit is an in­de­pen­dent view of a fi­nan­cial state­ment, it's not the view of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

"So the au­di­tors will be the on­ly peo­ple to an­swer why they qual­i­fy or rather refuse to give an opin­ion on the fi­nan­cial state­ment. They would have to an­swer that. From where I sit, I can tell you we def­i­nite­ly have a sol­ven­cy is­sue. The TTFA is in­sol­vent, we do not have the cash flow to pay our debts and that's ev­i­dent by the fact that you're see­ing and hear­ing about so many court ac­tions for how many years now.

"So we need to have cash flow and we need to ad­dress our debt-re­pay­ment is­sue."