Ahead of a planned 10.30 am meet­ing to­day be­tween the two par­ties, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is re­quest­ing a cor­rec­tion of the pub­lic record from the Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT).

Guardian Me­dia Sport has seen a copy of a let­ter ad­dressed to SporTT chair­man Kester Lendore and dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 9, 2026, in which the as­so­ci­a­tion re­quests pub­lic clar­i­fi­ca­tion from SporTT on its stance re­gard­ing the TTFA’s fund­ing re­quest for the up­com­ing Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, set to kick off on Sep­tem­ber 24.

The TTFA let­ter makes di­rect ref­er­ence to a back-page head­line in the Ex­press news­pa­per on Sep­tem­ber 8: “SporTT re­jects TTFA’s fund­ing re­quest for Con­ca­caf Na­tions League—$2.5M set­back.”

In its let­ter, the TTFA ex­pressed “deep dis­ap­point­ment and con­cern re­gard­ing the head­line,” go­ing on to add, “The pub­lished head­line cre­ates a ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent im­pres­sion and has caused sig­nif­i­cant rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to the as­so­ci­a­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, the TTFA’s un­der­stand­ing is that SporTT’s board did ap­prove the re­quest for Na­tions League fund­ing, pend­ing the com­ple­tion of rec­on­cil­i­a­tions. It fur­ther as­serts that all re­quired rec­on­cil­i­a­tions were com­plet­ed “and every dol­lar ex­pend­ed has been ac­count­ed for,” with SporTT be­ing giv­en sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion as re­quest­ed and that the TTFA has con­tin­ued to co­op­er­ate ful­ly with all queries and clar­i­fi­ca­tions dur­ing the re­view process.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands on Thurs­day that SporTT’s Sports De­vel­op­ment Per­for­mance Unit (SD­PU) did not de­ny the TTFA’s re­quest for $2.5M but in­stead made any fu­ture re­leas­es con­di­tion­al up­on the com­ple­tion of the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process, which was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the TTFA on May 13, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTFA, then, “It is nec­es­sary to cor­rect the pub­lic record and to ad­dress the rep­u­ta­tion­al harm caused to the as­so­ci­a­tion by the im­pres­sion cre­at­ed through the pub­lished re­port. We would be grate­ful if this mat­ter could be treat­ed with the ut­most ur­gency and if SporTT could take the nec­es­sary steps to clar­i­fy the po­si­tion pub­licly at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, SporTT CEO Arnold Ram said that he had not seen the TTFA let­ter but said, “The man­age­ment and the board of SporTT have act­ed with a high de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in re­spect of this Con­ca­caf Na­tions League (re­quest). “And I re­mem­ber clear­ly that con­di­tion­al ap­proval was giv­en as long as cer­tain things were re­ceived and rec­on­ciled over the pe­ri­od, so it’s not that there was a blan­ket dis­ap­proval of funds to­wards the TTFA.”

Ram al­so con­firmed that the re­view process has start­ed, say­ing, “It’s a lot of doc­u­ments, and our unit has start­ed; we have start­ed to process them. Whether there are any miss­ing doc­u­ments or not, I can’t say at this time.”

TTFA finds al­ter­na­tive cash flow fix­es

Ac­cord­ing to a TTFA source, the items be­ing rec­on­ciled re­late to years one and two of the se­nior men’s World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, the se­nior women’s team’s World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, and years two and three of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL). The source con­firmed that while US$2M was com­mit­ted by the gov­ern­ment for the se­nior men’s cam­paign, on­ly half of it was ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived, while the TTFA had to source the re­main­der from oth­er ar­eas of its bud­get to sat­is­fy cer­tain com­mit­ments while it waits on the gov­ern­ment’s dis­burse­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, on­ly TT$.9M out of TT$2M was re­ceived for the women’s cam­paign, and $500,000 out of TT$3M was paid for the pur­pos­es of salaries for TTPFL clubs. The source says these out­stand­ing funds and the TTFA’s sub­se­quent ef­forts to com­pen­sate are large­ly re­spon­si­ble for the non-pay­ment of some play­ers, ref­er­ees, and ser­vice providers.

How­ev­er, SporTT CEO Ram pro­vid­ed a slight­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

He said, “My un­der­stand­ing of the doc­u­ments be­fore me is that the com­mit­ment was made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued and even up­lift­ed by this present gov­ern­ment. Con­tained in the cab­i­net note was a stip­u­la­tion. Re­mem­ber, the cam­paign was bro­ken up in­to phas­es. So when you fin­ish your first phase, you have to do cer­tain things be­fore you can move on to the oth­er phase. So even though some of those things were not done, monies were pro­vid­ed up front in the hope that those things would be pro­vid­ed. And I think we are on the fi­nal leg of hav­ing those things rec­on­ciled now, so that monies will be paid out as long as the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process is com­plet­ed.