The an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) held re­cent­ly seemed to have stirred up a hor­net's nest with the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty in the coun­try seek­ing an­swers on the 2019 fi­nan­cials.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, I am per­plexed by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and its role. You see, I thought this com­mit­tee was in­sti­tut­ed to over­see the fi­nances of the TTFA and to be to­tal­ly trans­par­ent when it came to rev­enue (if any) and ex­pen­di­ture. There­fore, to read that mem­bers are seek­ing an­swers on fi­nan­cials is ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing.

FI­FA’s me­dia re­lease dat­ed March 17, 2020, not­ed that the com­mit­tee was to ful­fil four spe­cif­ic aims: (1) To run the TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs; I sup­pose that this is on­go­ing, for the most part, as every now and again, a re­lease is pub­lished from the gen­er­al sec­re­tary (Ag.) Amiel Mo­hammed or the chair­man of the com­mit­tee Robert Hadad mak­ing a state­ment on the news with ei­ther an ap­point­ment or the clar­i­fi­ca­tion of a query.

(2) To es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­ment­ed by the TTFA; I will have to ad­dress that a lit­tle lat­er on be­cause I am com­plete­ly baf­fled by that in terms of some state­ments at­trib­uted to Hadad.

(3) To re­view and amend the TTFA Statutes (and oth­er reg­u­la­tions where nec­es­sary) and to en­sure their com­pli­ance with the FI­FA Statutes and re­quire­ments be­fore du­ly sub­mit­ting them for ap­proval to the TTFA Con­gress; - I do not have a clue if and when this is sup­posed to be done so nat­u­ral­ly, I reached out to two in­di­vid­u­als close­ly linked with foot­ball in T&T. One laughed sar­cas­ti­cal­ly and said, “Boy I re­al­ly don’t know. This nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is look­ing to shut down foot­ball in the coun­try.” The oth­er per­son said, “I have no idea.” At that point, I did not feel too bad as, to be hon­est, I did not want to ad­mit that I, too, did not have a clue.

(4) To or­gan­ise and con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date. It ap­pears elec­tions of a new ex­ec­u­tive is not on the short term agen­da of this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. Per­haps, it is be­cause they have not com­plete­ly ful­filled their man­date giv­en to them by FI­FA. The nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed in March 2020 and their man­date clear­ly states: “The spec­i­fied pe­ri­od of time dur­ing which the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee will per­form its func­tions will ex­pire as soon as it has ful­filled all of its as­signed tasks, but no lat­er than 24 months af­ter its mem­bers have been of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed by FI­FA”. The clock is slow­ly tick­ing for Hadad and his team as their 24 month term ends in March 2022.

Let us now fo­cus on this debt re­pay­ment plan. Since the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed, pre­sum­ably their most im­por­tant man­date was to es­tab­lish this plan, I would have as­sumed that the first or­der of busi­ness was to get all of TTFA’s fi­nan­cials in or­der.

There­fore, I was tak­en by sur­prise when I saw the Guardian head­line on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2021 which read, “TTFA mem­bers seek an­swers on 2019 fi­nan­cials”. The au­dit was re­ject­ed at the AGM and I gen­uine­ly can­not un­der­stand why the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee failed to get ap­proval for the 2019 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment. Maybe I am be­ing to­tal­ly naive but here is a com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the high­est body in foot­ball with their man­date to look af­ter the fi­nances and debt re­pay­ment and they can­not even get the fi­nances passed.

Fur­ther, if no ap­proval of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials are giv­en, then de­ci­sions had to be de­ferred on the debt re­pay­ment plan if it even ex­ists. As a re­sult, TTFA is al­so un­like­ly to re­ceive fur­ther fund­ing from FI­FA. Nat­u­ral­ly, with the debt es­ti­mat­ed at $98.5Mil­lion, some mem­bers en­quired about the cur­rent debt and why a ti­tle or lease for the land that hous­es the so-called ‘Home of Foot­ball’ has not been ac­quired by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Why would the com­mit­tee ex­clude the val­ue of the land which is es­ti­mat­ed at around $42Mil­lion? Some­thing is not sit­ting right here. Wasn’t the land giv­en to the TTFA by the gov­ern­ment? FI­FA gave the mon­ey and TTFA built the ‘Home of Foot­ball’. Every­body posed and smiled at the open­ing and gave lav­ish speech­es and prais­es on this beau­ti­ful struc­ture that was go­ing to take TTFA out of debt and was sup­posed to be the shin­ing light for the fu­ture of Trinidad & To­ba­go's foot­ball de­vel­op­ment.

From then to now, no deed or lease has been ob­tained by any­one. So let us be fair to the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. They on­ly came in­to of­fice in March 2020 but from then to Oc­to­ber 2021, they can­not get some doc­u­ments from the gov­ern­ment to sat­is­fy the au­di­tors? Stake­hold­ers com­plain about foot­balling de­ci­sions made by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and while I can un­der­stand that they may lack the foot­balling knowl­edge, it is be­yond me that when it comes to de­ci­sions not per­tain­ing to foot­ball, they seem to get it all wrong. Who is re­spon­si­ble for ob­tain­ing this cer­tifi­cate? I can­not be­lieve that foot­ball is at a stand­still be­cause of this.

Now, with­out that $42Mil­lion in the ac­counts and with the debt at $98.5Mil­lion, Hadad has ad­mit­ted that the TTFA is in­sol­vent but it is not some­thing they are look­ing at right now.

I am even more con­fused - is it now that the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is look­ing to raise funds? Is it now that the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is look­ing at some sort of process to re­pay the debt that sud­den­ly came up­on them? Is it now they are look­ing for do­na­tions? Is it now they are look­ing for spon­sors some 19 months in­to its two-year term?

Hadad goes on, “there are many ways to deal with this debt but it’s not go­ing to hap­pen overnight”. Re­al­ly? Why is the gov­ern­ment now get­ting in­volved? Sure­ly, one should have been hav­ing di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment one year ago. All of a sud­den the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment needs to be part of a dis­cus­sion to clear the debt. I know that when I am al­lowed to go back in­to the sea (bizarre that wa­ter­parks are al­lowed to open be­fore beach­es), once the wa­ter starts to go from my feet to my knee to my waist to my head, it might be too late for me to sur­vive so from the time I go in­to the wa­ter, I should have a plan.

Once more, foot­ball has re­mained at rock bot­tom. Mean­while, Ja­maica's pre­mier di­vi­sion is in full flow with good, com­pet­i­tive match­es played week­ly while our foot­ball is at a stand­still. No pay­ment of play­ers, no tour­na­ments for the teams, no train­ing and we are go­ing nowhere fast. Well, as they say, an­oth­er day in par­adise.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.