There is no ceil­ing for the num­ber of teams en­ter­ing the pro­posed New Elite Foot­ball League in Sep­tem­ber.

Act­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Amiel Mo­hammed sought to clear the air on this mis­con­cep­tion as the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion seek a mod­el that will meet the needs of all clubs.

Up to last Fri­day’s dead­line date for reg­is­tra­tion, 20 clubs, most­ly from the T&T Pro League and the T&T Su­per Leagues had sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions to be in the league. Two weeks ago, a doc­u­ment ex­plain­ing the con­cept of the league that al­so served as an in­vi­ta­tion stat­ed: “The league is posed to be the pri­ma­ry af­fil­i­at­ed, elite and pre­mier league of T&T, op­er­at­ing at the high­est lev­el do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

Club li­cens­ing and oth­er reg­u­la­tions have been de­signed as a de­vel­op­ment tool for all foot­ball clubs in T&T. The cri­te­ria out­lined in these reg­u­la­tions have been care­ful­ly se­lect­ed to serve as guide­lines for clubs look­ing to in­crease their pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

The NE­FL is ex­pect­ed to run from Sep­tem­ber to May 2023 on an an­nu­al ba­sis, with an ini­tial hori­zon of three years.”

Be­fore last Fri­day’s close of the dead­line, some clubs raised con­cerns about be­ing pos­si­bly left out if they were not among the 10 teams to be se­lect­ed and about the ex­or­bi­tant reg­is­tra­tion fees.

Mo­hammed ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that, “There is no thresh­old, there is no ceil­ing. I don’t know where the mis­con­cep­tion is that there is on­ly ten teams in the league. If we have, for ex­am­ple, 15 teams that ful­fil the cri­te­ria, then we roll with 15 teams, if we have 95 teams that will ful­fil the cri­te­ria, we roll with 95.

Of course, I am just ex­ag­ger­at­ing that, but that is what it is. If it on­ly has eight teams that ful­fil the cri­te­ria, the same prin­ci­ple ap­plies.”

“ We’re al­ways en­gag­ing the stake­hold­ers, so we will con­tin­ue to en­gage with them to hear their con­cerns, whetehr it be those con­cerns or any oth­er con­cerns, to find the mod­el of the best way to move for­ward,” said Mo­hammed.

The clubs to have sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions are go­ing through the club li­cens­ing process at this time. This, as out­lined in the doc­u­ment, is crit­i­cal to clubs’ se­lec­tion for the league.

“What they sub­mit­ted was just an ap­pil­ca­tion form for the league, that don’t mean that they’re in the league,” Mo­hammed said.

Se­lec­tion for the league re­quires clubs to sat­is­fy two main ar­eas, name­ly (1) Club Li­cens­ing Re­quire­ments, which will be gov­erned by the guide­lines where the First In­stance Body will re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tion from clubs and make de­ci­sions on grant­i­ng li­cens­es. And (2) League De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee Re­quire­ments- which will re­view ap­pli­ca­tions based on the do­mes­tic re­quire­ments that are out­lined to par­tic­i­pate in the league.

Should clubs be ap­proved in both ar­eas, they will be as­sured of be­ing se­lect­ed in the league.

Mo­hammed said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has not yet re­ceived fund­ing for the league, but will con­tin­ue to keep the stake­hold­ers up­dat­ed. He de­scribed it as a work in progress.

The TTFA/NC has ap­proached the gov­ern­ment for an in­jec­tion of $3.5 mil­lion for a three-year pe­ri­od. This amount will en­sure that each club in the top tier, re­ceives $250, 000 to be used to pay salaries over the eight-month pe­ri­od.

The re­main­ing amount will be used to cov­er ref­er­ees fees ($500, 000), ad­min­is­tra­tive fees, a sec­ond tier league which is ex­pect­ed to cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300, 000 and coach­es’ ed­u­ca­tion.

Clubs are al­so re­quired to pay a reg­is­tra­tion fee of $75, 000 to be placed in bond/trust to se­cure their en­try in the top tier league.