The dust raised by sud­den and swift foot­ball takeover here in T&T has not yet set­tled and nei­ther will it set­tle soon, Es­pe­cial­ly if the oust­ed ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to pur­sue me­di­a­tion through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) on FI­FA’s de­ci­sion to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee here in T&T.

It was on­ly last Tues­day March 17, FI­FA an­nounced that it had dis­band­ed the rul­ing TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion led by William Wal­lace, in favour of its com­mit­tee to run the day to day af­fairs, es­tab­lish a plan to re­duce the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mount­ing debt, make nec­es­sary ad­just­ments to the TTFA statutes so that they are com­pli­ant with FI­FA’s and fi­nal­ly, to or­ga­nize and ex­e­cute an elec­tion at the end of its stip­u­lat­ed time in charge or at the end of the process, whichev­er comes first.

Since that com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the TTFA, FI­FA has nei­ther iden­ti­fied a chair­man for this com­mit­tee and its mem­bers nor has foot­ball’s glob­al gov­ern­ing body stip­u­lat­ed how long will this com­mit­tee serve, ex­cept to say that its stay will not ex­ceed 24 months.

Dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports, Clin­ton Url­ing - for­mer chair­man of the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in Guyana in 2014, said that the ag­griev­ed T&T foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors are well with­in their right to take the mat­ter to CAS with­out fear of rep­ri­mand from FI­FA.

How­ev­er, Url­ing fore­shad­owed that premise by stat­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the po­si­tion which the lo­cal as­so­ci­a­tion now finds it­self is, “…the point be­fore the same FI­FA says ‘you are no longer a part of the FI­FA fam­i­ly’ or bans the en­tire mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion.”

<End of the road for TTFA>

For­mer FI­FA VP Jack Warn­er backed this up when he stat­ed that the in­stal­la­tion of a nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee was “the end of the rope” for the TTFA and “the low­est point” for any FI­FA mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion.

By these pro­nun­ci­a­tions it seems that the TTFA and T&T’s sta­tus among the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty is hang­ing by a thread. In fact, one needs on­ly to re­view a sit­u­a­tion which emerged in 2008 lead­ing to the sus­pen­sion of the Samoa Foot­ball Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion with­in a mat­ter of eight months of a sim­i­lar in­ter­ven­tion by FI­FA to that which the TTFA now faces.

And if there is any­one that can warn the TTFA about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sus­pen­sion from the FI­FA fam­i­ly, that per­son is Warn­er him­self who was a mem­ber of the FI­FA Emer­gency Com­mit­tee which de­cid­ed on Samoa.

Ac­cord­ing to a FI­FA re­port which Guardian Me­dia Sports has seen - In 2008, fol­low­ing a joint mis­sion be­tween FI­FA and the Ocea­nia Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion in­to Samoa four months ear­li­er, FI­FA at­tempt­ed to set up a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee at the SFSF with the stat­ed ob­jec­tive to “re­store the prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball in Samoa.”

<Samoa's debt was on­ly US686,000>

At the time, the Samoa Foot­ball Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion (SFSF) was bur­dened with sig­nif­i­cant debt, be­lieved to be an es­ti­mat­ed $US686,000 and still with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bulging fur­ther if more cred­i­tors stepped for­ward with claims. FI­FA de­ter­mined that this, as well as gen­er­al mis­man­age­ment of the as­so­ci­a­tion “en­dan­gered not on­ly the as­so­ci­a­tion but al­so FI­FA’s Goal Project in Samoa.”

The FI­FA Goal Pro­gramme pro­vides re­sources and fund­ing for es­sen­tial projects so that mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can ad­vance the game of foot­ball. – FI­FA.com

In what could be in­ter­pret­ed as FI­FA act­ing (in the main) in the in­ter­est of pro­tect­ing its sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in the Samoa Goal Project as well as to save the fed­er­a­tion from crip­pling debt, Warn­er and the rest of FI­FA’s Emer­gency Com­mit­tee - chaired by for­mer FI­FA Pres­i­dent, Sepp Blat­ter and in­clud­ed oth­er for­mer FI­FA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers, Michel Pla­ti­ni, Is­sa Hay­a­tou, Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam, Rey­nald Temarii and Dr Nico­las Leoz – took ac­tion.

The sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the Samoan Fed­er­a­tion and T&T’s are strik­ing, start­ing with those be­tween the FI­FA Goal Pro­gramme, in­sti­tut­ed by Blat­ter in 1999 and the FI­FA For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme adopt­ed in 2016, un­der which the con­struc­tion and es­tab­lish­ment of the TTFA’s Home of Foot­ball has been fund­ed.

<FI­FA pro­tect­ing its in­vest­ment>

FI­FA For­ward is built to pro­vide 360-de­gree, tai­lor-made sup­port for foot­ball de­vel­op­ment in each of our mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions and the six con­fed­er­a­tions and is based on three prin­ci­ples - more in­vest­ment, more im­pact, more over­sight. The aim is to im­prove the way we de­vel­op and sup­port foot­ball across the globe so that foot­ball can reach its po­ten­tial in every sin­gle coun­try. – FI­FA.com

De­spite be­ing de­clared open un­der for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent David John-Williams last No­vem­ber, William Wal­lace and the new TTFA board of Di­rec­tors elect­ed on No­vem­ber 24, de­cid­ed to keep the HoF closed. They claim that an au­dit of the project has un­cov­ered that in ad­di­tion to the in­com­ple­tion of nec­es­sary works that would bring the fa­cil­i­ty up to code, there al­so sev­er­al out­stand­ing debts to sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors who worked on the project.

In Samoa in 2008, cred­i­tors threat­ened to fore­close on the Goal Project as well as to seize cer­tain as­sets be­fore the FI­FA Fi­nance Com­mit­tee agreed to an ex­emp­tion to its Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme rules to al­low the SFSF to use FAP funds to pay off out­stand­ing debts.

Mov­ing be­yond the fi­nan­cial re­sem­blances, there are al­so sim­i­lar­i­ties in le­gal pos­tur­ing be­tween the SFSF and the TTFA.

How­ev­er, un­like FI­FA’s will­ing­ness to bend its FAP rules where fi­nances are a con­cern, at­tempt­ing to take them on in the very pub­lic glare of the le­gal are­na proved to not such a good idea in the case of Samoa.

<Why Samoa was sus­pend­ed>

Af­ter FI­FA at­tempt­ed to in­sti­tute is own re­me­di­al mea­sures, then SFSF pres­i­dent Tau­tu­lu Roe­buck re­fused to rec­og­nize the pow­er of FI­FA’s nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee and twice tried to take the dis­pute to a tri­bunal.

An ini­tial sub­mis­sion in June 2008 to CAS was or­dered to be with­drawn due to ad­min­is­tra­tive over­sight, but by Oc­to­ber, ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle ap­pear­ing on the web­site of Fi­jian news­pa­per – Fi­ji Sun, the FI­FA Emer­gency Com­mit­tee de­cid­ed to sus­pend the SFSF with im­me­di­ate ef­fect over its non-com­pli­ance with the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee.

In No­vem­ber of 2008, Ra­dio New Zealand (RNZ) re­port­ed that Samoa’s Sports Tri­bunal ruled in favour of the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee tak­ing over the af­fairs of the SFSF. The Tri­bunal grant­ed the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee full ju­ris­dic­tion and or­dered Roe­buck to re­sign his post and re­lin­quish all Fed­er­a­tion files to the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.

Fol­low­ing Roe­buck’s of­fi­cial ap­peal of these de­ci­sions as well as FI­FA’s sus­pen­sion of the SFSF, the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion of sport de­ter­mined in May 2009, the SFSF pres­i­dent’s “Lack of stand­ing to ap­peal” re­lat­ing to the “Va­lid­i­ty of a FI­FA de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish a nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee”.

The Court’s ad­ju­di­cat­ing pan­el de­ter­mined the fol­low­ing:

As for the func­tion of the NC, the fed­er­a­tion’s chair­man is there­fore au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­placed by the NC and the re­placed chair­man, as an in­di­vid­ual not sub­ject to the FI­FA Statutes, there­fore can­not ap­pear be­fore CAS in his in­di­vid­ual ca­pac­i­ty as he lacks stand­ing. The ap­peal should thus be re­ject­ed on these grounds with­out go­ing in­to the mer­its of the case.”

Like Samoa and oth­er mem­ber na­tions be­fore it, the TTFA is well with­in its right to pur­sue jus­tice against any per­ceived wrong-go­ing even if his­to­ry shows that the out­come might not al­ways be favourable.

Ed­i­tor's note:

Ac­cord­ing to TTFA and FI­FA doc­u­ments seen by Guardian Me­dia Sports - Dur­ing 2012 and 2014 two dif­fer­ent groups with­in the TTFA sought to get FI­FA's in­volve­ment to rem­e­dy con­cerns that plagued T&T foot­ball. The first was a group of play­ers who were aim­ing to qual­i­fy for the 2014 World Cup and sight­ed sev­er­al is­sues among mis­man­age­ment and fi­nan­cial con­cerns that would af­fect the coun­try's chances of achiev­ing its ob­jec­tive. In the sec­ond in­stance, two vice pres­i­dents serv­ing un­der for­mer Pres­i­dent (now de­ceased) Ray­mond Tim Kee (Rudolph Thomas and Lennox Wat­son) re­quest­ed FI­FA's in­volve­ment.

The re­sult was that FI­FA through its then sec­re­tary Jerome Val­cke gave the TTFA an ul­ti­ma­tum; to es­tab­lish an In­de­pen­dent Re­form Com­mis­sion, or; face be­ing re­port­ed to the FI­FA Emer­gency Com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion and ac­tion, which could have in­clud­ed the ap­point­ment of a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee.

The re­forms com­mit­tee was set-up and that led to a new con­sti­tu­tion which changed the name from the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and elec­tions which saw David John-Williams elect­ed as the new TTFA Pres­i­dent in No­vem­ber 2015.