Few would have expected that the wonderful game of football could have been so directly entangled with issues like bribery, racketeering, money laundering, and more complicated acts of individuals earning money illegally.
The shockwaves ran through 209 countries across the world faster than a nuclear weapon and discomforted many nations over the news which may have brought charges of indictment, immediate arrests, and promises of further charges as the United States authority continue their investigations for the sake of cleaning up football forever globally.
Superficially, the accusations which came from media who have been paying close attention to Fifa and their years of dubious financial accountability, were clearly working as hard as the legal luminaries to expose what they considered to be the wrong doings of deals of bribery, which crossed the boundaries between sports marketing companies and members of the Fifa executive.
The bubble has busted and the stench of dishonesty has made its way through almost every confederation, with Concacaf very prominent in the fold.The principle of the phrase, "innocent until proven guilty," is carefully fitted in among comments for legal protection for the scribes, the initial image of the series of arrests in Zurich in the wee hours of the morning, plus persons pleading guilty, some been indicted, which the extended list has been concealed until further notice.
Because of the 20-year Fifa involvement of our local "Football Father," Jack Warner, whose name has been publicly given to the world, we, as a nation, are now facing the wrath of those who already brand us as strangers to the truth and fanatics of getting rich in a hurry.Add to that, the universally constant practice of money laundering seems to have existed in this twin-island nation, even if not in the visible manner of the larger countries.
Maybe what we should do ourselves, concerning these allegations aimed in the directions of the Fifa executives, is some self searching with regard to the Caribbean people who have been drawn into the arena of indictment and arrest of both Jack Warner and the current Concacaf president and Fifa vice-president, Jeffrey Webb.
Having been attached to the organisation in a capacity of technical activity, especially involved in the actual game itself at World Cups, the jobs of the stakeholders are of no concern to persons in my capacity as a technocrat.However, my experiences of football in the Caribbean, from as early as the late 1950s to the present, have brought a number of issues which could have been shadows of some of the charges which have been laid by the US authorities.
Let me state here and now that the early days of our football development in T&T and in the Caribbean were controlled by people with impeccable integrity, whom were qualified to handle management of the sport in a most transparent way.Today, I could extend my respect to a number of persons in the region whose contributions can be heralded and even more appreciated, now that we have witnessed the performances of their successors.
Messrs Eric James, Ken Galt, Oscar Harvey, Ernil Paul of T&T, Harold Griffith and Val Mc Comie of Barbados, George Abrahams of Jamaica and Mr McIntyre of Grenada, please take a bow.The sadness which has been brought to us by the two Caribbean representatives must not necessarily be viewed in isolation, if only they have been the servants of Caribbean football and would have been influential wisely or adversely in the management of their decisions and their finances.
It is no secret that incidents of poor administration, inadequate financing and dubious money management have resulted in difficult times for many of the small countries in the region.Sometimes, the local association leaders were the catalyst for their demise, while advice shared between the exposed Concacaf leaders and the locals may have been errors of judgment.
Did the absence of proper administration bring the debilitating factors into focus and disgust? Quite possibly.Today's dramatic fiasco in the house of Fifa in a general way must take some responsibility for the missteps, simply because more attention was needed from experts financiers, technocrats, and marketing personnel, as these small countries were in the learning process during their thrust towards better football capabilities.
Surely, there are lessons to be learnt by the CFU from this exercise. Mistakes are often some valuable lessons to those who wish to accept them.The desire to use this downfall must be to become more efficient and educate those who are given the responsibility to conduct proper management. Sitting and chastising the offenders will not help. We must look to the sky for a better football future.