T&T's par­tic­i­pa­tion at the CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fiers next year will rest heav­i­ly on the shoul­ders of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) be­ing led by its elect­ed pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, who FI­FA re­moved from of­fice on March 17.

Fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion by FI­FA on Sep­tem­ber 24 for vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes, the TTFA re­al­is­ti­cal­ly can still en­able T&T to par­tic­i­pate at the qual­i­fiers which be­gin in March if the TTFA abide by the con­di­tions of the sus­pen­sion, which means bring­ing the TTFA Statutes in line with that of the FI­FA and drop­ping all court-re­lat­ed bat­tles with the FI­FA be­fore De­cem­ber 18.

Fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion, Wal­lace re­spond­ed by in­struct­ing his At­tor­neys to chal­lenge the sus­pen­sion of the FI­FA through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land and fil­ing an In­junc­tive Re­lief at the CAS which would en­sure that the coun­try is al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. How­ev­er, the Con­ca­caf had made a con­ces­sion for T&T par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Gold Cub which took place four days af­ter the ban but with the con­di­tion that the coun­try ho­n­ours FI­FA re­quests by the dead­line of De­cem­ber 18.

How­ev­er, Wal­lace, who was in­fu­ri­at­ed by the sus­pen­sion, al­so or­dered his at­tor­neys to re­sume the court bat­tle with the FI­FA over the le­git­i­ma­cy of the ap­point­ment of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to re­place them (TTFA) as the man­agers of foot­ball in T&T. His de­ci­sion was al­so con­trary to the vote tak­en by the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship in an un­of­fi­cial meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 22.

on Tues­day, FI­FA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura, in a let­ter to Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad, re­mind­ed him of the sus­pen­sion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of miss­ing the CON­CA­CAF Qual­i­fiers if the sus­pen­sion is not lift­ed, say­ing: "By way of this com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we in­form you that FI­FA World Cup Qatar 2022 World Cup Qual­i­fiers for the Con­ca­caf re­gion (here­inafter: Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers) are sched­uled to be­gin in March 2021. The or­gan­i­sa­tion of such com­pe­ti­tion en­tails com­plex lo­gis­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional mat­ters in­ten­si­fied by the COVID-19 cri­sis. In view of this, please note that FI­FA has de­cid­ed that, in or­der to en­sure the prop­er prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning of the par­tic­i­pant teams, if the sus­pen­sion im­posed on the TTFA is not lift­ed by 18:00 CET (6:00 pm TT TIme) on 18 De­cem­ber 2020, we have no choice but to ex­clude the TTFA from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers."

The dead­line is sim­i­lar to the one giv­en on Sep­tem­ber 18 in which the TTFA had un­til 3:00 pm TT Time on Sep­tem­ber 23 to with­draw its court mat­ter in the T&T High court against FI­FA or be sus­pend­ed.

Guardian Me­dia Sports ef­forts to con­tact Wal­lace yes­ter­day for a re­sponse proved fu­tile, but he had made it clear in a re­lease re­cent­ly that his group will on­ly drop their mat­ter against the FI­FA if the lo­cal court rules against them on Fri­day and if the court rules in their favour, his group the Unit­ed TTFA, will call an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing among the mem­ber­ship to de­cide on how they move for­ward.

Samoura as­sured al­so that FI­FA will on­ly com­mu­ni­cate and recog­nise the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee: "As a re­sult of the sus­pen­sion of the TTFA's mem­ber­ship of FI­FA, the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which was ap­point­ed by FI­FA has nec­es­sar­i­ly ceased all op­er­a­tional and man­age­ment func­tions over the TTFA. How­ev­er, we want to high­light that the on­ly le­git­i­mate lead­er­ship of the TTFA, recog­nised by FI­FA and Con­ca­caf, is the one led by Mr Robert Hadad. Hav­ing said this any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from FI­FA with TTFA will con­tin­ue to be ex­clu­sive­ly be­ing with Mr Robert Hadad. We thank you for your at­ten­tion to the above."