William Wal­lace, for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is hold­ing his breath to see if the po­si­tion, tak­en by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that he will not use tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to clear the ex­ist­ing debt of the TTFA, will stand.

Wal­lace's com­ment comes in the wake of a Guardian Me­dia Sports' re­port in which Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, re­vealed that the TTFA was in­sol­vent.

The HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies di­rec­tor said he is wait­ing on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to talk to Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe, about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of clear­ing the TTFA debt, which is es­ti­mat­ed at $98.5 mil­lion.

The TTFA debt could rise dras­ti­cal­ly if the $42 mil­lion es­ti­mat­ed for the land, hous­ing the Home of Foot­ball, is in­clud­ed and ap­proved in the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment at Sun­day's Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM).

Wal­lace said if the Prime Min­is­ter de­cides to clear the TTFA debt he will be glad for the NC and glad for foot­ball.

“Af­ter 18 months of the NC in charge, with their main man­date be­ing to deal with the debt, I am hear­ing that their plan is to ask FI­FA and the gov­ern­ment. If there is still hope of FI­FA pay­ing the debt, then there is in­for­ma­tion that the NC has that we are not privy to.

"As far as the gov­ern­ment is con­cerned, the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed to me then, that he was not will­ing to use tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to deal with the debt and I agreed with him, if that po­si­tion has since changed I am hap­py for the TTFA.

"How­ev­er, it pains me to see that we have not moved foot­ball and the TTFA for­ward af­ter all the 'noise'. It is al­so sad that a plan to deal with the debt by the du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive was nev­er even giv­en a chance to fail.”

The Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion took over the reign of lo­cal foot­ball from the David John-Williams' ex­ec­u­tive in No­vem­ber 2019, fol­low­ing an elec­tion process. How­ev­er, the Unit­ed TTFA, which Wal­lace head­ed was re­moved by the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA on March 17, on the ba­sis that the TTFA was on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy.

Wal­lace and his team had been equipped with a num­ber of ini­tia­tives to gen­er­ate in­come and erad­i­cate the TTFA debt, such as the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar Laven­der deal which was de­signed to con­struct a mul­ti-pur­pose sport­ing, com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial fa­cil­i­ty at the Ari­ma Velo­drome. At that time, the Laven­der project need­ed Cab­i­net's ap­proval, to go ahead.

The then-TTFA had al­so se­cured a con­tro­ver­sial deal with Avec Sports as well as sev­er­al spon­sor­ship deals to help with the op­er­a­tions of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Wal­lace: “The peo­ple in and out of the TTFA who were mak­ing all the noise nev­er took time to un­der­stand what "Nor­mal­i­sa­tion " meant in the con­text of what we were faced with.

"The im­pres­sion that FI­FA would liq­ui­date the debt seem to be the un­der­stand­ing among many. That think­ing led me to pub­licly state that if that was so, I would im­me­di­ate­ly step aside.

"Even in my meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter, I in­di­cat­ed to him that who­ev­er is in charge of foot­ball, once the debt is not dealt with, ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance would be hin­dered, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for any mean­ing­ful progress.”