Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe in an emer­gency vir­tu­al meet­ing of all ma­jor stake­hold­ers of foot­ball on Thurs­day clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pressed con­cern on im­pli­ca­tions of the de­ba­cle be­tween the T&T oust­ed ex­ec­u­tive of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and FI­FA, the gov­ern­ing body for the sport.

Thir­ty-nine per­sons rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous clubs and in­ter­est groups at­tend­ed the meet­ing which rep­re­sent­ed a wide spec­trum of stake­hold­ers and mem­ber­ship of the TTFA.

The in­vi­ta­tion for the meet­ing was al­so ex­tend­ed to all mem­bers of the for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive in­clud­ing pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, how­ev­er, nei­ther he nor the oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers which in­clud­ed vice-pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip at­tend­ed as was re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports, yes­ter­day.

Fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion tak­en and sub­se­quent com­mu­ni­ca­tion by FI­FA in a let­ter on Wednes­day to Robert Hadad, chair­man of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee of the TTFA, the is­sue of the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball and the loss of re­turn on years of in­vest­ment in the sport is un­der se­vere threat.

In its let­ter, FI­FA clear­ly out­lined its po­si­tion on the claim be­tween TTFA and FI­FA at the T&T High Courts and drew at­ten­tion to Ar­ti­cle 59 of the FI­FA Statute, which ex­press­ly con­tains the pro­hi­bi­tion of re­course to or­di­nary courts un­less specif­i­cal­ly pro­vid­ed for. In the let­ter, FI­FA un­der­lined that the fail­ure to meet these oblig­a­tions may, ac­cord­ing to Ar­ti­cle 14, para­graph 4, of the FI­FA Statutes, “lead to sanc­tions as pro­vid­ed for in the FI­FA Statutes, in­clud­ing a pos­si­ble sus­pen­sion.”

Such sanc­tions can and will have a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on foot­ball in T&T.

At the meet­ing, chair­man of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho shared his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the im­pli­ca­tions of a de­ci­sion of sus­pen­sion by FI­FA, the most crit­i­cal of which would be on lo­cal ath­letes.

First­ly, a de­ci­sion to sus­pend T&T’s mem­ber­ship will mean youth na­tion­al teams to se­nior na­tion­al teams can­not par­tic­i­pate in any in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion in­clud­ing friend­lies.

Play­ers would not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete in the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers forc­ing some play­ers in­to re­tire­ment and the mar­ketabil­i­ty of play­ers will be af­fect­ed with youth na­tion­al play­ers not be­ing af­ford­ed the scout­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties at these qual­i­fy­ing match­es.

Ac­cord­ing to Co­ma­cho, youth teams will not be able to trav­el to com­pete in sanc­tioned club tour­na­ments out­side of T&T, ex­am­ple the Dal­las Cup. Schol­ar­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties will al­so be im­pact­ed as play­ers who play at the CON­CA­CAF Un­der-17 to U-20 tour­na­ments are po­si­tioned to be seen by North Amer­i­can col­lege scouts.

There will be a loss of in­vest­ment from the pri­vate sec­tor, re­sult­ing in TTFA's con­tin­ued in­debt­ed­ness.

Lo­cal clubs will not be al­lowed to com­pete in the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League, no op­por­tu­ni­ty for ref­er­ee ap­point­ments, match com­mis­sion­er ap­point­ments at any in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment and T&T will not have ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes from FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF, Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) or any con­fed­er­a­tion or Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion which will sub­se­quent­ly af­fect its FI­FA rank­ings.

When the floor was opened to the mem­bers, those who spoke shared their con­cerns about the sit­u­a­tion, in­di­cat­ing that the ac­tions tak­en by the four in­di­vid­u­als of the Unit­ed TTFA were with­out the sup­port of the mem­ber­ship and that they were not ap­proached for their po­si­tion be­fore these le­gal pro­ceed­ings be­gan.

They ex­pressed that this sit­u­a­tion had to be looked at from the ath­lete’s po­si­tion and it was their du­ty to sup­port the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and the sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of the sports sec­tor.

The Sports Min­is­ter called on the mem­bers to “take ac­tion and let good sense pre­vail in the mat­ter.” She re­mind­ed them “about the work and in­vest­ment that the Gov­ern­ment has and con­tin­ues to make in foot­ball and the cam­paign for FI­FA World Cup Qatar 2022, the op­por­tu­ni­ties that will be lost for eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion through sports tourism and the loss in the po­ten­tial, that sport and in par­tic­u­lar foot­ball, has for ad­dress­ing the ills in many com­mu­ni­ties”.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Cud­joe, the sit­u­a­tion that the TTFA now finds it­self, with the ap­point­ment of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, is as a re­sult of years of poor man­age­ment in foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the con­tin­ued in­debt­ed­ness that the as­so­ci­a­tion is now in, and that what was now re­quired is vi­sion, strat­e­gy, fi­nan­cial pru­dence, sound man­age­ment and struc­ture.

This is the pur­pose of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and FI­FA's sus­pen­sion and sanc­tions will push T&T’s po­si­tion back decades to the detri­ment of all and es­pe­cial­ly the young ones.

Cud­joe said that it will be “lu­di­crous for the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty to ex­pect the gov­ern­ment and hard-work­ing tax­pay­ers to bail out TTFA af­ter years of mal man­age­ment or for the pri­vate sec­tor to con­tin­ue to make an in­vest­ment when there is no clear di­rec­tion or op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth and pros­per­i­ty.” She, there­fore, called on the right-think­ing stake­hold­ers at the meet­ing “to step up; your ac­tion or in­ac­tion can shat­ter the dreams of our ath­letes and our youth.”