“Gov­ern­ment’s in­volve­ment in foot­ball around the world is a norm.” This was the re­sponse from the T&T Pro League’s Act­ing Chair­man Brent San­cho fol­low­ing a state­ment by Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe re­cent­ly that the T&T Pro League will not re­ceive any funds from her gov­ern­ment un­til a prop­er busi­ness plan is sub­mit­ted.

The Sports Min­is­ter in a re­cent ra­dio in­ter­view on i95.5fm on Mon­day made it clear that any funds or any in­vest­ment to foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar and sports, in gen­er­al, to be made by the gov­ern­ment, will be giv­en specif­i­cal­ly for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal ath­letes.

Cud­joe said that gov­ern­ment has, for more than 16 years, in­vest­ed in the T&T Pro League with the in­ten­tion that it would be­come self-suf­fi­cient, but it has not hap­pened.

San­cho told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day that: “One of the things we have to re­al­ize is that the gov­ern­ment’s sup­port in foot­ball, whether it be in T&T or any­where else in the world, it is some­thing that is the norm. You will find it very hard to go to a coun­try and see that the gov­ern­ment isn’t in­volved in some way, form or fash­ion. In fact, in Spain re­cent­ly, the gov­ern­ment fund­ed heav­i­ly the Women’s Foot­ball League, so the gov­ern­ment’s in­volve­ment is some­thing that is part and par­cel of the de­vel­op­ment of the sport. If you look at it from what foot­ball means to this coun­try, and the im­por­tant role it plays, that alone, I ex­pect that that will con­tin­ue. I would ex­pect that from what­ev­er con­ver­sa­tions, that there will be a short-term rem­e­dy, while we’re look­ing at the long-term pic­ture.”

San­cho, a mem­ber of the T&T 2010 World Cup team and own­er of T&T Pro League out­fit- Cen­tral FC, which is com­mon­ly known as ‘The Sharks’ ex­plained fur­ther - “It is key to un­der­stand that we need a vi­brant foot­ball league to achieve our goals from a na­tion­al per­spec­tive. Any­time our na­tion­al team is suc­cess­ful, it is be­cause we’ve had a vi­brant League, and this time it’s no dif­fer­ent. So I ex­pect that the gov­ern­ment would come on board and I ex­pect that cor­po­rate T&T will play an in­te­gral role in mak­ing sure that the League will be played.”

Af­ter some 14 to 16 months with­out the sport be­ing played, San­cho said the Board of the T&T Pro League and its mem­bers are very much aware that it has led to un­em­ploy­ment among its play­ers and staff mem­bers which is not good at all.

Ac­cord­ing to San­cho, who is a part-time tele­vi­sion colour analy­sis with Sports­max: “We are very con­scious of this sit­u­a­tion and we are now look­ing at what is pos­si­ble, to at least, try to play foot­ball, with all due re­spect to the COVID-19 mea­sures, this sea­son rather than lat­er.”

San­cho, a for­mer Min­is­ter of Sports in 2015, added that a de­ci­sion was tak­en to stage a unit­ed League be­tween the T&T Pro League and the Su­per League, dis­cus­sion about a busi­ness plan is still fresh, as it in­volves rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both leagues, as well as mem­bers of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion which is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the FI­FA- ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which as­sumed of­fice No­vem­ber last year af­ter a lengthy court bat­tle be­tween the for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive led by William Wal­lace and FI­FA af­ter the lat­ter was re­moved from of­fice.