Akash Sama­roo

Sip­ping on his cup of corn soup yes­ter­day morn­ing, 64-year-old Fen­wick “Chalkie” Charles de­scribed Ar­genti­na ver­sus France as the best World Cup Fi­nal he had seen since 1978.

But was the 3-3 thriller enough of a spec­ta­cle to over­look the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion that gave the mid­dle east­ern coun­try the right to host the tour­na­ment? Tak­ing a glance at Jack Warn­er’s Sun­shine News­pa­per of­fice, Chalkie, who was sit­ting mere me­ters away from the Arou­ca build­ing, didn’t seem to think so.

“What­ev­er it is a fel­la do, he has to pay for it you know,” he said.

In law there’s a say­ing, “let jus­tice be done though the heav­ens fall,” and Chalkie said he be­lieves ac­tions have con­se­quences. How­ev­er, with that opin­ion, he stood alone among Arou­ca res­i­dents yes­ter­day.

While on Sun­day, foot­ball star Li­onel Mes­si was be­ing cel­e­brat­ed in Buenos Aires, Warn­er was be­ing ac­knowl­edged by many in T&T for the role he played in en­sur­ing the tour­na­ment went to Qatar. Warn­er told re­ports on Sun­day that the World Cup re­sults vin­di­cat­ed his ac­tions, al­though there are still al­le­ga­tions that the process was fraught with cor­rup­tion. Res­i­dents of his home­town seem to agree.

“At the end of the day the tour­na­ment was beau­ti­ful so clear­ly he ain’t make a wrong choice,” said Vashist Deyal, 74, “I from Five Rivers, Jack from Five Rivers, I know him to be a peo­ple per­son, what­ev­er he do in the past peo­ple should still al­ways be grate­ful to Jack Warn­er.”

Lis­ten­ing in on our con­ver­sa­tion was Michael Khan who agreed that all should be for­giv­en and for­got­ten. He even went as far as to call for Warn­er’s re­turn to FI­FA.

“Be­cause he’s a dark man they try­ing to pull him down. The tour­na­ment was good, they should have him back in FI­FA, they shouldn’t be pun­ish­ing him. He is a foot­ball man.”

A few me­ters away along the East­ern Main Road, 59-year-old An­tho­ny Christ­mas said de­spite the al­le­ga­tions the en­tire world owes Warn­er a debt of grat­i­tude.

“We shouldn’t just thank him for the tour­na­ment, not just be­cause wrong things com­ing in be­tween and you want to blame the man for it, we must thank him all the time.”

Paulette Si­mon, a bar­tender and res­i­dent of Lopinot Road, al­so came to Warn­er’s de­fence.

“I don’t think what he did was cor­rupt. He did his best and peo­ple have to learn that Jack is the man.”

How­ev­er, 64-year-old Carl­ton More­au, a strong sup­port­er of Warn­er due to his phil­an­thropy in the com­mu­ni­ty, said Unit­ed States law en­force­ment of­fi­cials will not give Warn­er a pass. More­au said as en­ter­tain­ing as the tour­na­ment was, it will not de­ter the FBI.

“You know Amer­i­ca to leave any­body alone? When they stain you, they come for you at all costs, even with their own peo­ple. There’s no for­give­ness with Amer­i­ca. Mr Warn­er has done noth­ing wrong and we as a coun­try should stand by him but Amer­i­ca is big and pow­er­ful.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a com­ment from Warn­er at his Sun­shine News­pa­per of­fice in Arou­ca but he told us he was ill.