Sep­tem­ber 16, could mark a pe­ri­od that will go down in T&T's foot­ball his­to­ry, and one that is like­ly to sur­pass any oth­er achieve­ment on the foot­ball field.

The coun­try faces a de­ci­sion by foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA, on whether the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) will be sus­pend­ed, as was stat­ed in a let­ter on Au­gust 26 to Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, by FI­FA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura, if the le­gal chal­lenge against FI­FA in the T&T court was not with­drawn by to­day.

An­gus Eve, the out­spo­ken na­tion­al Un­der-17 head coach said, "We must have been banned al­ready.

"Con­sid­er­ing the dead­line giv­en by the FI­FA and how Wal­lace and the TTFA mem­bers have been mov­ing, I don't think we will be spared, as Wal­lace and com­pa­ny will not be back­ing down. In fact, they have even won again in the court af­ter Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in grant­ed an in­junc­tion to stop T&T's foot­ball mem­ber­ship from hold­ing an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) to stop the TTFA from fight­ing the FI­FA in court over the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee," Eve said.

How­ev­er, Eve, us­ing two of the world's pop­u­lar free­dom fight­ers Mar­tin Luther King and Mal­colm X to ref­er­ence his point, said both men did not sac­ri­fice the mass­es in their fights but rather them­selves, not­ing that Wal­lace and his team should do the same and not sac­ri­fice the peo­ple of T&T over a point they may want to prove.

Ac­cord­ing to Eve, the en­tire coun­try and maybe the world, would agree that the man­ner in which the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive was oust­ed just three months af­ter be­ing fair­ly elect­ed in­to of­fice, was not right but then they should not suf­fer for that fight, say­ing that the coun­try can­not look for­ward to FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers, CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup, play in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League, ref­er­ees will lose the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ply their trade abroad.

The TTFA was re­moved from of­fice on March 17, af­ter a FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF team de­ter­mined that the TTFA's man­age­ment flaws had put the sport on the verge of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty. But Wal­lace and com­pa­ny first took their fight to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land in May be­fore mov­ing to the High Court in T&T, lat­er that month cit­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al bias at the CAS af­ter be­ing asked to pay the the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs.

Since then, Jus­tice Gob­in ruled on Au­gust 13 that the mat­ter can be heard in the T&T High Court and sev­en days lat­er FI­FA gave no­tice to ap­peal. Then on Sep­tem­ber 11, Wal­lace and his team filed an in­junc­tion ask­ing the T&T court in its ap­pli­ca­tion to stop the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee from:

1. Tak­ing any fur­ther steps to con­vene and/or con­duct any meet­ing, on the Sep­tem­ber 15, 2020 or any oth­er date, which pur­ports to be an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing of the Claimant;

2. In­struct­ing and/or di­rect­ing any per­son or per­sons to seek to with­draw the in­stant claim and/or in any way, man­ner of fash­ion from in­ter­fer­ing with or seek­ing to un­der­mine, the in­stant pro­ceed­ings, ex­cept by way of law­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by the De­fen­dant’s du­ly ap­point­ed At­tor­neys-at-Law or oth­er law­ful in­ter­ven­tion;

3. Mak­ing use of and/or pub­li­ca­tion of the Claimant’s of­fi­cial lo­go, let­ter­head, and stamp/seal; and 2. That the De­fen­dant do pay the costs of this ap­pli­ca­tion.

The ap­pli­ca­tion has list­ed 20 grounds for the TTFA re­quests, while Williams has pro­duced an af­fi­davit with 20 doc­u­ments which com­prised among oth­ers, the mem­ber­ship signed pe­ti­tion let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 28, the re­sponse from Hadad dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 4, agree­ing to con­vene the EGM on Sep­tem­ber 15 and the Au­gust 26 let­ter from FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Samoura, ad­dressed to Hadad, warn­ing that TTFA would face sanc­tions if it did not with­draw the mat­ter out of the T&T High Court by to­day.

Judge Gob­in grant­ed Wal­lace and his team's re­quest on Mon­day.

Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate, not­ing that if the TTFA does not want to fol­low the FI­FA rules now, then they nev­er will.

"This could mean the TTFA could be think­ing about start­ing its own foot­balling body with its own rules and po­ten­tial mem­bers," said Eve.

Mean­while, FI­FA will hold its Con­gress on Fri­day and will have on its agen­da, sus­pen­sion and ex­pul­sion of Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion. Eve said he did not want to pre­dict what ac­tion, if any ac­tion, will be tak­en against T&T.

FI­FA's de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to man­age the TTFA af­ter it en­forced Ar­ti­cle 8.2 of the FI­FA Statutes which states: "Ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances be re­moved from of­fice by the Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od."

The TTFA is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, Crys­tal Paul and Ja­son Jones, while FI­FA's le­gal team is Cherie Gopie and M. Hamel-Smith & Co.