Gyasi Mer­rique

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

gyasi.mer­rique@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer chair­man of the 2014 FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed in Guyana, Clin­ton Url­ing, says that there are some things cer­tain­ly not nor­mal about FI­FA’s re­cent takeover of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

In an ex­ten­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day, Url­ing drew at­ten­tion to the fact that FI­FA had ap­point­ed the TTFA’s Fi­nance man­ag­er, Tyril Patrick, as in­ter­im man­ag­er of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“They have to do ex­act­ly what they did in Guyana’s case. You have to bring im­par­tial voic­es, im­par­tial vi­sion to this mat­ter to bare. Folks who have not been a part of the prob­lem for want of a bet­ter word,” said Url­ing.

Patrick has since de­clined FI­FA’s of­fer hav­ing been ad­vised by the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dis­band­ed ad­min­is­tra­tion not to ac­cept FI­FA’s re­quest.

A source with­in the TTFA has con­firmed that Patrick has been the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nan­cial man­ag­er for at least the last three years, hired in 2017 un­der for­mer pres­i­dent David John-Williams, who was re­placed on No­vem­ber 24.

Up­on en­ter­ing of­fice, new TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his ad­min­is­tra­tion claimed to have found over TT$50 mil­lion dol­lars in debt in­curred by their pre­de­ces­sors.

In T&T’s case, FI­FA not­ed with great con­cern that a re­cent fact-find­ing vis­it “to as­sess, to­geth­er with an in­de­pen­dent au­di­tor, the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion of TTFA”, un­cov­ered “ex­treme­ly low over­all fi­nan­cial man­age­ment meth­ods, com­bined with mas­sive debt, have re­sult­ed in the TTFA fac­ing a very re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty.”

FI­FA con­clud­ed that the sit­u­a­tion re­quired that cor­rec­tive mea­sures be ap­plied with ur­gency.

Wal­lace’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has since vo­cif­er­ous­ly claimed that well be­fore that FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF fact-find­ing team ar­rived in Feb­ru­ary, it ac­knowl­edged and ad­dressed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s lack of fi­nan­cial best prac­tices in writ­ing to FI­FA, em­pha­sis­ing that these de­fi­cien­cies ex­ist­ed be­fore he was vot­ed in­to of­fice. On ar­riv­ing in T&T, the vis­it­ing con­tin­gent was pre­sent­ed with a de­tailed au­dit of the ac­counts as well as what the new TTFA called a de­tailed debt-erad­i­ca­tion pro­pos­al to fix the sit­u­a­tion.

Url­ing al­so not­ed that while FI­FA pos­sess­es broad pow­ers to in­ter­vene in the ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs of any mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion un­der “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances”, he ques­tions FI­FA’s tim­ing with re­spect to T&T.

“I know FI­FA has the au­thor­i­ty to set up these nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tees and ar­ti­cle 8.2 gives them broad pow­ers to do it. Some­times we for­get that the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions are crea­tures of FI­FA and the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion suc­cumbs to the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the statutes of FI­FA,” Url­ing said, be­fore adding, “But what I’ve read that for me seems to be an anom­aly, is that the Trinidad fed­er­a­tion re­cent­ly held elec­tions and a new body took over.

“I as­sume that FI­FA would have giv­en that new body a year or so to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and see if the sit­u­a­tion was get­ting bet­ter. So, I don’t know if a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was war­rant­ed in this case.”

When­ev­er FI­FA sees a need to in­ter­vene in the ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs of one of its mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions, it al­most al­ways cites one or a com­bi­na­tion of two statutes which guide the op­er­a­tions of all its af­fil­i­ate mem­bers.

Ar­ti­cle 8 of FI­FA’s statutes, in ac­cor­dance with which it made its de­ci­sion to de­scend up­on the TTFA on March 17, is thought to deal specif­i­cal­ly with the con­duct of bod­ies, of­fi­cials and oth­ers.

The FI­FA Coun­cil’s email cor­re­spon­dence from its sec­re­tary gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura to the TTFA, more specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed para­graph two of Ar­ti­cle 8, which states that once FI­FA deems that ‘ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances’ ex­ist with­in any mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­e­cu­tion of its busi­ness, it is well with­in its right to re­move the ex­ec­u­tive of that as­so­ci­a­tion and in­stall a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

FI­FA Statutes – Gen­er­al Pro­vi­sions

1 All bod­ies and of­fi­cials must ob­serve the Statutes, reg­u­la­tions, de­ci­sions and Code of Ethics of FI­FA in their ac­tiv­i­ties.

2 Ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances be re­moved from of­fice by the Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od of time.

3 Every per­son and or­gan­i­sa­tion in­volved in the game of foot­ball is oblig­ed to ob­serve the Statutes and reg­u­la­tions of FI­FA as well as the prin­ci­ples of fair play. Nine of­fi­cial lan­guages.

Of the ten or more times that FI­FA has ap­point­ed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tees in mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion coun­tries with­in the last five years, it has more of­ten than not, wield­ed ei­ther Ar­ti­cles 8 or 14 as its rod of cor­rec­tion.

Where the cir­cum­stances are more egre­gious, that is, where con­sti­tu­tion­al or po­lit­i­cal dis­crep­an­cies ex­ist, FI­FA can take sim­i­lar ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with an­oth­er piece of lit­er­a­ture, Ar­ti­cle 14 para­graph 1(a).

FI­FA Statutes – Mem­ber­ship

1 Mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions have the fol­low­ing oblig­a­tions:

a) to com­ply ful­ly with the Statutes, reg­u­la­tions, di­rec­tives and de­ci­sions of FI­FA bod­ies at any time as well as the de­ci­sions of the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) passed on ap­peal on the ba­sis of Ar­ti­cle 57 para­graph 1 of the FI­FA Statutes.

It is in­struc­tive to note that, while nei­ther of these ar­ti­cles de­fines ex­act­ly what may dic­tate FI­FA’s ac­tion, on­ly when that ac­tion is tak­en does the Coun­cil usu­al­ly out­line what prompt­ed it.

FI­FA’s re­liance on this Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee rem­e­dy has be­come more and more ap­par­ent with­in re­cent times. In fact, with­in the past ten years, there have been more than a dozen cas­es around the world. A quick study of some of these cas­es sug­gests that there is no re­al con­sis­ten­cy to the cir­cum­stances pre-dat­ing the set-up of bod­ies tasked with nor­mal­i­sa­tion and or re­form.

How­ev­er, in most of the in­stances where FI­FA draws up­on Ar­ti­cles 14.1 (a) in par­tic­u­lar, there usu­al­ly seems to be in­stances of po­lit­i­cal un­rest or in­ter­fer­ence, con­sti­tu­tion­al col­lapse or elec­toral ma­nip­u­la­tion with­in the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion.

<FI­FA in Ghana, Egypt, Uruguay>

For ex­am­ple, when a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed in Ghana in Au­gust 2018 it was as a re­sult of ram­pant cor­rup­tion through­out the hi­er­ar­chy of the Ghana Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion with charges against sev­er­al mem­bers in­clud­ing the then pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

In Au­gust 2019 in Egypt, a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed to steer the Egypt­ian FA fol­low­ing the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of its en­tire board af­ter that coun­try’s elim­i­na­tion from the African Cup of Na­tions.

And af­ter a FI­FA com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed in Uruguay in Au­gust 2018, it was in re­sponse to, “par­tic­u­lar­ly the fact that the elec­toral process for the po­si­tion of AUF pres­i­dent is not in ac­cor­dance with the re­quire­ments of trans­paren­cy as out­lined in the FI­FA and CON­MEBOL statutes.”

<FI­FA’s NC func­tions as the re­ceiv­er>

Url­ing, a Guyanese en­tre­pre­neur and busi­ness own­er, not­ed that no two cas­es may be iden­ti­cal to T&T’s, or Guyana’s sit­u­a­tion at the time of his ap­point­ment in 2014 on a two-year man­date but he stat­ed that the work of any nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is gen­er­al­ly a stan­dard op­er­a­tion.

“When the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee comes in, it func­tions as the re­ceiv­er in ac­count­ing terms. The head of that com­mit­tee he or she as­sumes the role as the CEO of the as­so­ci­a­tion or what you all an Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor to en­sure that the or­gan­i­sa­tion runs in a cer­tain way and sets up sys­tems and process­es which are what the new ex­ec­u­tive will in­her­it.”

In Guyana, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due elec­tions had re­peat­ed­ly been de­layed as in-fight­ing with­in the var­i­ous lev­els of foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion took hold. His nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee apart from man­ag­ing the day-to-day run­ning of the coun­try’s foot­ball was tasked with amend­ing the then con­sti­tu­tion of the GFF one and to or­gan­ise elec­tions ac­cord­ing to the new con­sti­tu­tion.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form will form a part of the TTFA’s nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and the over­all man­date does not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

FI­FA has tasked it with the fol­low­ing:

- to run the TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs;

- to es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­mentable by the TTFA;

- 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;

- to or­gan­ise and to con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

<TTFA faces ban from FI­FA fam­i­ly>

Hav­ing al­so tak­en is­sue with some of FI­FA’s de­ci­sions and even go­ing as far as to ques­tion the po­lit­i­cal mo­tive of FI­FA, for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er told Guardian Me­dia Sports that the de­vel­op­ment was still an in­dict­ment on the state of foot­ball in the coun­try. Warn­er stat­ed that it was the low­est point for the sport and “the end of the rope”.

Url­ing agrees but says that the sit­u­a­tion should not be looked up­on as all doom and gloom.

“It’s the point be­fore the same FI­FA says ‘you are no longer a part of the FI­FA fam­i­ly’ or bans the en­tire mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion. But I think the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee through­out T&T should be seen as an op­por­tu­ni­ty, a hope that things could and will get bet­ter.

“If you look at Guyana now, you see a fed­er­a­tion that’s flour­ish­ing. You still see some pock­ets of is­sues ob­vi­ous­ly but the whole or­gan­i­sa­tion turned around and I think for T&T a sim­i­lar oc­cur­rence will or could hap­pen.”

Re-it­er­at­ing that it is FI­FA’s gen­er­al prac­tice to ap­point per­sons with no close ties to the sport or the par­tic­u­lar is­sues fac­ing it, Url­ing fore­warned against any de­vi­a­tion from the norm.

“It is es­sen­tial that in­di­vid­u­als are se­lect­ed that the en­tire foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty has trust in, be­lieves in their man­age­ment com­pe­ten­cies and ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

He added that once the com­mit­tee op­er­ates trans­par­ent­ly with reg­u­lar in­put from all of the sport’s stake­hold­ers across the en­tire nor­mal­i­sa­tion process, foot­ball should be the win­ner at the end of FI­FA’s pre­scribed pe­ri­od of en­gage­ment.

“Even the ex­ec­u­tive body that just got re­placed has a chance to come back at the end of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion process. As much as they may think that the process is un­fair, sup­port the process, maybe in a year or two let’s say the same group runs again and wins again, they come in­to a sit­u­a­tion where there are new process­es in place and with­out that noose of debt around their neck. They can say ‘give us a chance, we did not lose the last elec­tion and were not re­placed be­cause we weren’t the prob­lem.”