The im­me­di­ate fu­ture of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (T&TPFL) could be de­cid­ed on Sun­day when Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA) Phillip Watts en­gages clubs in Tier 1 of the League, as well as foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), at a meet­ing at the VIP Lounge of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

The meet­ing starts at 10 am and will have di­rect im­pli­ca­tions on how soon the 2026-2027 sea­son will com­mence. There­fore, it is like­ly that the meet­ing will go well in­to the day, as the liveli­hoods of more than 400 play­ers and staff mem­bers from the dif­fer­ent clubs re­main at stake, with there be­ing no do­mes­tic com­pet­i­tive ac­tion for any of them since the 2025-2026 sea­son hav­ing end­ed in March of this year.

Watts re­vealed on Wednes­day that a ma­jor stick­ing point for the re­sump­tion of the coun­try’s high­est lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al club foot­ball is that the TTFA re­mains non-com­pli­ant with the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT), the key im­ple­men­ta­tion and op­er­a­tional arm of the MSYA, with a bill of $12 mil­lion dat­ing back to 2024 still un­ac­count­ed for in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

How­ev­er, this ap­pears to be un­known to the TTFA, with two out of the three vice pres­i­dents yes­ter­day as­sur­ing that all com­pli­ance re­quire­ments have been met.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ka­reem Paul has been the point of con­tact for the TTFA in the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process with the SporTT; how­ev­er, phone calls from Guardian Me­dia Sport for a com­ment have gone unan­swered up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion of this ar­ti­cle.

The rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process be­tween the two or­gan­i­sa­tions has been an on­go­ing one, and at one stage it threat­ened to ham­per T&T’s prepa­ra­tions and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fi­nal set of Group A match­es in League A of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League in Sep­tem­ber. Back then, the SporTT, through its Sports De­vel­op­ment Per­for­mance Unit, found it­self in a race against time at­tempt­ing to sort through and ver­i­fy TTFA fi­nan­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion which was at the time un­der­stood to be per­tain­ing to var­i­ous ar­eas, such as funds ex­pend­ed dur­ing the men’s and women’s World Cup cam­paigns and fund­ing to the TTPFL, in­clud­ing salaries for clubs.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials of the SporTT, speak­ing un­der con­di­tions of anonymi­ty, ex­plained that in their de­sire to as­sist the TTFA to be­come com­pli­ant in time for fix­tures against Haiti on Sep­tem­ber 24 and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on Sep­tem­ber 27, that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion $12M fig­ure was tem­porar­i­ly de­ferred with the ex­pec­ta­tion that it would be rec­ti­fied in time for the start of the new TTPFL sea­son.

“When rec­on­cil­i­a­tion was left out, the TTFA had reached 95 per cent com­pli­ance, but it was de­cid­ed that since the TTPFL rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is part of the process, the TTFA, like all oth­er Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs), was re­quired to meet it,” one SporTT of­fi­cial ex­plained.

Watts sought to clear the air on claims that the Min­istry has been hold­ing back the league.

“The last dis­cus­sions we had with SporTT, the TTFA is a body that falls un­der SporTT; the last thing SporTT would have re­port­ed to me is that the TTFA had close to $12 mil­lion in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion out­stand­ing that spans to 2024,” Watts ex­plained.

He added, “In SporTT’s last note to cab­i­net, they would have rec­om­mend­ed that no monies be paid out un­til the ac­tu­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is com­plet­ed. So what they did was re­lease half of the mon­ey. The note had mon­ey for the Men’s World Cup, it had mon­ey for the Women’s World Cup, and it al­so had a pay­ment for the Pro­fes­sion­al League, and SporTT would have rec­om­mend­ed, be­cause of that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and the vol­ume of mon­ey in­volved, that we do not pay the full amount.”

“They asked to re­lease half, and that is in a cab­i­net note. So when it went to bud­gets, and bud­gets ho­n­oured the 50% pay­ment, and the bal­ance is there wait­ing for when the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is com­plet­ed, and I think that is there since some­time in Au­gust. Still, SporTT is say­ing that they are miss­ing doc­u­ments; they are still work­ing with TTFA to try to rec­on­cile, so that is out of my hands now as a min­is­ter; it is out of SporTT’s hands, so it is up to TTFA now to try to do what they need to do to rec­on­cile with SporTT. So it is not that we are with­hold­ing any mon­ey or any­thing like that; the TTFA is ful­ly aware of what is go­ing on.”

Mean­while, Watts al­so ad­dressed the sug­ges­tions that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the man­age­ment of the league be re­turned to the clubs. The idea was most re­cent­ly cham­pi­oned by San Juan Jabloteh chair­man Ni­rad Tewarie, as he chas­tised the TTFA for the de­layed start of com­pe­ti­tion and called for clubs to han­dle their own af­fairs.

Tewarie’s mus­ings earned him a meet­ing with min­is­ter Watts two days lat­er, for a dis­cus­sion on foot­ball mat­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, “They pitched out some ideas as to how maybe the min­istry could as­sist with get­ting the mon­ey through to the clubs in­stead of pass­ing it through TTFA. We dis­cussed all that, but as a re­spon­si­ble min­is­ter, I would not meet with a club to have those kinds of dis­cus­sions with­out the gov­ern­ing body of foot­ball in­volved in that. So this is why we agreed to meet on Sun­day in the pres­ence of the TTFA, be­cause I’m com­mit­ted to hav­ing the pro­fes­sion­al league start; you know, as a min­is­ter and as a min­istry, we are com­mit­ted.”