De­spite be­ing vil­i­fied in con­trast­ing ways, the pair of David John-Williams and William Wal­lace, both for­mer pres­i­dents of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, are be­ing seen as the ones to steer T&T foot­ball to a po­si­tion of sta­bil­i­sa­tion, to­geth­er.

So says for­mer coach and Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Han­ni­bal Na­j­jar on Tues­day, as he be­lieves both in­di­vid­u­als have as­sets that will be help­ful to T&T foot­ball mov­ing for­ward.

Na­j­jar said, both men agreed with the idea of work­ing to­geth­er in prin­ci­ple last year, and he gave the as­sur­ance he will at­tempt to reach out to them again to see what can be done. This means both men would have to put aside their dif­fer­ences to join the same slate for the T&TFA Elec­tion, which will be de­ter­mined by the cur­rent Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, be­ing led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad.

In No­vem­ber 2019 the team of John-Williams was re­placed by Wal­lace's Unit­ed T&TFA, fol­low­ing a hot­ly con­test­ed elec­tion at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va.

John-Williams failed to con­vince the mem­ber­ship that he was trans­par­ent and ac­count­able dur­ing his reign as pres­i­dent, as this was chal­lenged by Unit­ed T&TFA mem­ber Kei­th Look Loy in the courts mid­way dur­ing his four-year term of of­fice which start­ed in No­vem­ber 2015.

John-Williams was al­so chas­tised for his han­dling of the con­struc­tion of the Home of Foot­ball, among many oth­er is­sues. But lat­er, the same mem­ber­ship joined forces to re­move Wal­lace, af­ter a FI­FA said that the Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion had placed lo­cal foot­ball on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty, de­spite them be­ing in of­fice for just three months.

Na­j­jar, who de­scribed the sport as be­ing the low­est of low at this point said: "I be­lieve that William Wal­lace has the spir­it in him to be a part of some­thing, any­thing, that will help foot­ball, re­al­ly from a gen­tle lead­er­ship place. It's like hav­ing two kinds of lead­ers, one who is de­ter­mined but has a gen­tle ap­proach to how he would have led, and one who is de­ter­mined and has a more coura­geous, bold­er way to go for­ward, which is what David has. I am go­ing to call both of them and speak to them that I am go­ing to try to re-en­gage the idea of both of them be­ing brought in, in some way, ini­tial­ly, sep­a­rate­ly and or to­geth­er by the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, for them to see how they can uti­lize what is ex­ist­ing and not to try and do it on their own."

At present, the Hadad-led nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee of At­tor­ney Judy Daniel, and busi­ness­men Nigel Ro­mano and Trevor Gomez, is nowhere close to achiev­ing the man­date set out by the sport's world gov­ern­ing body of 1. Es­tab­lish­ing a debt re­pay­ment plan that will be im­ple­mentable by the TTFA; 2. Re­view and amend the TTFA Statutes and en­sure their com­pli­ance with the FI­FA Statutes and re­quire­ments be­fore du­ly sub­mit­ting them for ap­proval to the TTFA Con­gress; 3. Run the TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs; 4. Or­ga­nize and con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

Ac­cord­ing to Na­j­jar: "I feel hope­ful, and I feel we have hit our heads up against a wall right now and I think Hadad and them are con­cerned with the im­age that is out there right now, with all that is go­ing on and them be­ing re­ject­ed or some ques­tion mark over their heads by the coach­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lo­cal coach­es, and these com­mit­tees that they have kind of os­tra­cized."

Na­j­jar who coached T&T be­tween 2002-2003, be­lieves it will fool­ish for the mem­ber­ship to write off both men be­cause of their past, as they still have so much to of­fer.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, Wal­lace said he prefers to stay out of the foot­ball right now as there are too many peo­ple with per­son­al agen­das. John-Williams on the oth­er hand re­fused to com­ment.