The T&T Pro League will have to pro­duce a very strong busi­ness plan if it is to re­ceive fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment.

Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe said this on Sat­ur­day as she ad­dressed the is­sues fac­ing sports in T&T, as well as the ways the gov­ern­ment can help, on the An­dre Bap­tiste Ra­dio Pro­gramme on I95.5FM.

“Foot­ball is every­body’s sport, so of course, the gov­ern­ment will in­vest and con­tribute but their busi­ness plan has to be a sound one, and we have to do bet­ter than we did be­fore,” Cud­joe said.

The T&T Pro League has been on a tran­si­tion­ing phase with a pos­si­ble merg­er with the T&T Su­per League (TTSL) to form the main Leagues in the coun­try, which is set to be com­pa­ra­ble with the top In­ter­na­tion­al Leagues such as the Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship, the Ger­man Bun­desli­ga and the Span­ish La Liga, among oth­ers.

This process was be­ing as­sist­ed by the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF AND UE­FA, along with the coun­try’s par­ent body the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), back in 2018.

Cud­joe said her gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed in the Pro League for some 16 years and the league is still not sus­tain­able.

"We have in­vest­ed in the Pro League from as ear­ly as 2004, that is over 16 years of in­vest­ment in the Pro League that had the in­ten­tion of be­com­ing self-sus­tain­able, and with that arrange­ment with the Pro League, where we said af­ter three years have been com­plet­ed, we would look at the busi­ness plan on the way for­ward.”

Ac­cord­ing to Cud­joe: “I knew they were mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant strides as it re­lates to hav­ing the Pro League and the Su­per League merge, and un­der the guid­ance of the TTFA, those con­ver­sa­tions had start­ed.

"I don’t know where they are right now, but I haven’t seen a pro­pos­al, as it re­lates to that. Of course, I hope it will be some­thing that will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of all lo­cal ath­letes and the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball."

In 2020, Cud­joe said pub­licly that fund­ing was on­ly go­ing to be giv­en to grass­root sports, a com­ment that came in the midst of the wran­gling be­tween the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion which was led by William Wal­lace, and the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA over the right to re­place the Wal­lace-led Unit­ed TTFA with a FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.