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Sunday, July 27, 2025

TTFA must be normalized, if not now, when?

by

Andre E Baptiste
1951 days ago
20200325
Andre Baptiste

Andre Baptiste

Nor­mal has be­come ab­nor­mal in these times for the world. There are many in this world cur­rent­ly that be­lieve that ab­nor­mal is the new nor­mal and in this con­text, I am not talk­ing about per­son’s be­hav­iour, in­tegri­ty or be­liefs but rather the ab­stract op­po­site that de­fines a coun­try and in some cas­es a sport, a con­sti­tu­tion and the or­ga­ni­za­tion charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to man­age such.

The an­nounce­ment on March 17 by FI­FA that it is send­ing a Nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee to this coun­try has sent shock­waves to all if not most but the ques­tion is - Should we be sur­prised?.

There may be at least six oth­er sports in this coun­try that re­quire some in­ter­ven­tion.

The facts are that Foot­ball is the most pop­u­lar sport in this coun­try while re­main­ing not the most suc­cess­ful giv­en on­ly one Se­nior Men’s World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion in 2005 for the 2006 World Cup. How­ev­er, if you do not mea­sure suc­cess on World qual­i­fi­ca­tion events both for men and women then foot­ball is a suc­cess be­cause it is the sport in this coun­try for which near­ly all cit­i­zens would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in at one time or the oth­er at any age-group lev­el. This, there­fore, dic­tates that it is crit­i­cal in every which way to this coun­try.

There­fore, his­to­ry will dic­tate that af­ter 2006, the se­nior men’s team lost its way through the cor­ri­dors and of­fices of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and has not re­cov­ered since. In 2014 our se­nior women foot­ballers in­spired by a team spir­it and dri­ve from all in­volved from ad­min­is­tra­tion to coach to the cap­tain to play­ers to sup­port­ers and even among our la­tent doubters (that “L” word again) over­came one ob­sta­cle af­ter an­oth­er to just fall short at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on tears filled night on De­cem­ber 2.

Af­ter that loss and dis­ap­point­ment, Many felt the ham­mer of Fi­fa was com­ing there­after but wise­ly a change in the con­sti­tu­tion to al­low the one club vote sys­tem based on the rec­om­men­da­tion by an elite group of T&T cit­i­zens (will­ing to vol­un­teer time and en­er­gy for no fi­nan­cial re­ward) may have bought the Ray­mond Tim Kee ad­min­is­tra­tion some time, it was fi­nal­ly rat­i­fied in Ju­ly 2015 but then lat­er in 2015, Tim Kee’s new pol­i­cy un­locked the door to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, as it should al­ways be in any or­ga­ni­za­tion.

And In came David John-Williams whose style af­ter the elec­tion rubbed some the wrong way. Per­haps he did not trust those around him, Per­haps they did not trust him but sad­ly for all, un­der the new dis­pen­sa­tion of the TTFA every­one had a voice, each per­son could speak and even if not heard by dis­sent­ing voic­es, the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia and po­lit­i­cal one-up­man­ship meant their views would be made pub­lic some­where else, over time it would be­come tox­ic. John-Williams be­lieved in his idea be­cause he was a foot­ball man, rich in the his­to­ry of the Pro League with W Con­nec­tion and will­ing to in­vest his mon­ey where his mouth is. And Fi­fa all this time lurk­ing in the back­ground would have again tak­en note and sharp­en their pen­cils af­ter all this was T&T the coun­try of Austin” Jack “ Warn­er, a man they now de­spised be­cause of what they be­lieved he had done to them (in­ter­est­ing­ly not for them).

As well a change in the lead­er­ship of FI­FA, with Gio­van­ni In­fan­ti­no seek­ing out and get­ting John- Williams sup­port in his FI­FA pres­i­den­cy would have made the FI­FA in­ter­nal thrust to move in on T&T, pos­si­bly get a stay of ex­e­cu­tion. In­fan­ti­no was elect­ed Pres­i­dent of FI­FA in Feb­ru­ary 2016.

Thus un­til No­vem­ber 2019 when the Home of foot­ball was opened, all Nor­mal­iza­tion thoughts and talks were avert­ed or dis­con­tin­ued. So like Tim Kee, John-Williams had avoid­ed the ham­mer by not on­ly mere strat­e­gy but al­so I sug­gest by lis­ten­ing to ad­vice from oth­ers.

William Wal­lace wins in 2019 in a com­pet­i­tive but fair elec­tion on the back­drop of not on­ly change but al­so ideas and promis­es as well.

The coun­try is ready and wait­ing, but not for what comes next, af­ter sev­er­al log­i­cal pro­pos­als for new staffing and roles, comes the thought that there is no mon­ey to fund such. Where are the FI­FA mon­ey, the FI­FA sup­port, and the FI­FA grant?

FI­FA’s han­dle though was over, they were no longer di­rect­ly in­volved, not vis­it­ing, not check­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, not check­ing the pay­ments, not read­i­ly in dis­cus­sion with the TTFA and that was now go­ing to be a con­cern. But the ques­tion has to be - Why should it? This was a fa­cil­i­ty that was to be an in­come gen­er­a­tor even­tu­al­ly through the ho­tel and a planned in­come gen­er­a­tor en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre as well, like foot­ball fields to rent or lease out. But that nev­er ma­te­ri­al­ize be­cause of ques­tions raised by the new­ly ap­point­ed team on the fa­cil­i­ty and even­tu­al­ly the pub­licly en­dorsed clo­sure of the re­port­ed $2 mil­lion US fa­cil­i­ty.

FI­FA’s ra­tio­nale for im­ple­ment­ing the Nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee has been ques­tioned in light of the words ex­pressed on my pro­gramme by Pres­i­dent Wal­lace and the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ramd­han and the ap­par­ent as­sur­ances giv­en to both by Fi­fa of­fi­cials just over three weeks ago. Just as I told both men, they need­ed to get those thoughts and opin­ions in writ­ing be­cause at this stage they mean lit­tle.

Ramd­han shoots from the hip and talks from the heart, they are a good pair at times, be­cause they are both pas­sion­ate but again in this foot­ball en­vi­ron­ment that is Trinidad and To­ba­go where egos ex­ist, there are al­ways peo­ple try­ing to shut you down for your be­liefs be­cause it was not theirs.

The days of just rolling in and ex­pect­ing no ques­tions are gone. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion works both ways and not just one alone. There is a sense that Wal­lace and Ramd­han may want what is best for our foot­ball and so too did John-Williams and Tim Kee but the dif­fer­ence may just be how each pro­ceed­ed in this re­gard and al­so who was in charge of Fi­fa at the time. Tim Kee was the Pres­i­dent dur­ing the rough days of Fi­fa in­ves­ti­ga­tion and chang­ing of the guards while John-Williams sup­port­ed the in­cum­bent.

Sad­ly both Wal­lace and Ramd­han missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stake their in­ten­tions and claims per­son­al­ly with both the Pres­i­dent of FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF in No­vem­ber

Last­ly, FI­FA in this en­vi­ron­ment will find it dif­fi­cult to se­lect per­sons who will be able to with­stand what may come next one way or the oth­er un­less they can get the – buy-in – of the pub­lic by them­selves be­ing open and trans­par­ent with all the in­for­ma­tion in their pos­ses­sion. It is the on­ly way for­ward and let our hopes they re­al­ize that be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go pay the ul­ti­mate price. It may al­so be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to con­vince pro­fes­sion­als of FI­FA way un­less they can ex­plic­it­ly de­tail their find­ings and ob­jec­tives and not hide be­hind in­nu­en­dos. It may be ask­ing a lot of them, but we the peo­ple of this coun­try – de­serve no less than that.


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