At­tor­neys act­ing on be­half of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion- Emir Crowne and Matthew Gayle, have agreed to take their case to the next lev­el which will be a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter that will of­fi­cial­ly ini­ti­ate court pro­ceed­ings through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land, against the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball - FI­FA.

This be­came nec­es­sary af­ter FI­FA, failed to re­spond to their (TTFA) let­ter by the sched­uled time of 8:00 am on Mon­day. The let­ter asked FI­FA to re­scind its de­ci­sion to send a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to run the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball.

On March 17, FI­FA de­cid­ed to en­force ar­ti­cle 8 para­graph 2 of the Fi­fa Statutes (which states that ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may, un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, be re­moved from of­fice by the Fi­fa Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od), as it be­lieved that TTFA was on the verge of in­sol­ven­cy.

FI­FA de­cid­ed af­ter a three-man Fi­nan­cial com­mit­tee vis­it­ed T&T in Feb­ru­ary and ex­am­ined the TTFA books af­ter its ac­counts were frozen on Feb­ru­ary 13, fol­low­ing a high court or­der by one its for­mer em­ploy­ees.

How­ev­er, the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, be­ing led by William Wal­lace has agreed to chal­lenge this, say­ing that FI­FA's ac­tion was prej­u­di­cial, un­jus­ti­fied and the move was with­out mer­it. Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph 'Sam" Phillip, who would have made ex­act­ly four months in­to of­fice fol­low­ing their No­vem­ber 24, 2019 elec­tion tri­umph, gave FI­FA an 8:00 am dead­line on Mon­day to re­spond by re­scind­ing their de­ci­sion. TTFA's for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that TTFA lawyers re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from FI­FA.

Ramd­han, a for­mer TT ref­er­ee who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the 1998 World Cup ad­mit­ted they were not at lib­er­ty to make com­ments for fear of prej­u­dic­ing the case, but stands by his as­so­ci­a­tion's po­si­tion that his ad­min­is­tra­tion, which has done a lot in the lit­tle time they were in pow­er, will fight against the in­jus­tice of FI­FA.

Ramd­han not­ed that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had on­ly re­ceived the sup­port of three out of the 31 mem­bers of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), all of whom re­quest­ed to re­main anony­mous for fear of vic­tim­iza­tion by the CON­CA­CAF and the FI­FA. Af­ter a let­ter and phone call was sent to all CFU mem­bers on March 19, said: “We got re­spons­es from three mem­bers, all sup­port­ing the stance we are tak­ing. But they are so afraid that if they are known, they will be tar­get­ed. The oth­er mem­bers did not even both­er to ac­knowl­edge our call, such is the di­vi­sive­ness that ex­ists among the re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­han, this di­vi­sive­ness among our Caribbean mem­bers was cham­pi­oned by for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent David John-Williams, who the CON­CA­CAF and the FI­FA have used to achieve their man­date. From the 41 CON­CA­CAF na­tions, 31 are from the re­gion, an ad­van­tage in num­bers that is un­der-uti­lized, due to a per­ceive de­pen­den­cy by the CON­CA­CAF (Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball and the- FI­FA (Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tions), Ramd­han said.

Mean­while, Ramd­han al­so sought to clear the air on the debt of the TTFA, say­ing it has been con­firmed as $50 mil­lion. In his let­ter ad­dressed to the FI­FA on Jan­u­ary 13, the TTFA put the debt at TT$33.7 mil­lion. How­ev­er, the TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary said: “Present­ly the out­stand­ing bal­ance owed con­cern­ing the Home Of Foot­ball is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion. The amount of con­firmed debt TT$15,211, 861.50. At­tached for your in­for­ma­tion and yet to be de­ter­mined is TT$25 mil­lion which rep­re­sents two mat­ters which are be­fore the courts, the Jack Warn­er and Shel­don Phillips mat­ters. These fig­ures can change dra­mat­i­cal­ly based on the cur­rent trend.”

He ex­plained that at­tempts were made to pull the Shel­don Phillips mat­ter out of the court with an at­tempt to set­tle am­i­ca­bly be­tween the par­ties, both Phillips and Wal­lace have been hav­ing talks to find a res­o­lu­tion.

<CFU Boss: Chal­lenge to FI­FA takeover like­ly to fail>

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Bar­ba­di­an Randy Har­ris says while the de­ci­sion by FI­FA to take over the ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go is un­for­tu­nate, an ap­peal against the move is like­ly to be un­suc­cess­ful.

While the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and oth­ers in the lo­cal foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty have de­scribed as a coup, the plan by the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport to re­place the board with a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, Har­ris said FI­FA was act­ing with­in the rules that all mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions (MAs) have agreed to play by.

TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace an­nounced Wednes­day that the as­so­ci­a­tion has mount­ed a chal­lenge to FI­FA’s de­ci­sion at the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS).

On Thurs­day Har­ris told An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on I955 FM’s Sports ra­dio show that, "The T&TFA has found it­self in a sad sit­u­a­tion which all of us in the Caribbean could be in to­mor­row.”

How­ev­er, he said, an ap­peal would be an ex­pen­sive op­tion that had lit­tle chance of suc­cess.

“In this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion – in my view, based on my ex­pe­ri­ence – it would be very, very dif­fi­cult to win a case such as this be­cause FI­FA has a right to de­cide when they will in­tro­duce nor­mal­i­sa­tion. If you read the statutes, ba­si­cal­ly we all agree to play un­der the stat­ues of FI­FA,” Har­ris con­tend­ed.

FI­FA said on March 17, that it was go­ing the nor­mal­i­sa­tion route be­cause an as­sess­ment it car­ried out in con­junc­tion with the con­ti­nen­tal gov­ern­ing body, CON­CA­CAF, found ex­treme­ly low over­all fi­nan­cial man­age­ment meth­ods, com­bined with a mas­sive debt that re­sult­ed in the TTFA fac­ing “a very re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty”.

Har­ris not­ed that giv­en the TTFA’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, it would be dif­fi­cult for it to ad­e­quate­ly ad­min­is­ter foot­ball in the twin-is­land re­pub­lic.

“You can’t have it both ways…. The funds that FI­FA is al­lot­ting to us is not a right, it is a priv­i­lege. FI­FA can get a pres­i­dent next week that de­cides that that is not the po­si­tion that FI­FA will take in the fu­ture. What will we do in the Caribbean?” he ques­tioned.

FI­FA’s nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee will have up to two years to car­ry out its work, in­clud­ing cre­at­ing a debt re­pay­ment plan which the TTFA can im­ple­ment, re­view­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body’s statutes and en­sur­ing their ad­her­ence to FI­FA reg­u­la­tions, and over­see­ing new elec­tions.