Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) mem­ber coun­tries re­port­ed­ly dis­cussed the new 2022 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion for­mat for the CON­CA­CAF re­gion two years ago and agreed with the move in prin­ci­ple.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day, Grena­da Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (GFA) pres­i­dent Ch­eney Joseph and Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (JFF) coun­ter­part Michael Rick­etts gave con­flict­ing re­ports on how the dis­cus­sion went down in the lead-up to CON­CA­CAF's new for­mat an­nounce­ment last week.

In its an­nounce­ment last week, CON­CA­CAF said the team ranked in the top six by FI­FA in Sep­tem­ber 2020 will en­ter a Hexag­o­nal phase com­pe­ti­tion to play for three guar­an­teed places in the World Cup. The sec­ond part of the qual­i­fiers will be played in a group stage among CON­CA­CAF coun­tries ranked 7-35 ac­cord­ing and the top team from these qual­i­fiers will earn the right to face the fourth-place team from the Hexag­o­nal stage for the right to en­ter a fi­nal play-off with an­oth­er Con­fed­er­a­tion, ei­ther Ocea­nia or Asia, for an­oth­er spot in the World Cup.

But this is in to­tal con­trast to the pre­vi­ous qual­i­fy­ing sys­tem, in which teams pro­gressed the 'Hex' based on their per­for­mance and place­ment in the dif­fer­ent group qual­i­fiers.

This sparked de­bate in foot­ball cir­cles on whether the move was de­signed to ben­e­fit the CON­CA­CAF pow­er­hous­es to the detri­ment of the weak­er CFU teams, since the low­er ranked teams would have to play more foot­ball and would not get a chance top up­set the top teams for the three au­to­mat­ic spots, in the first in­stance.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, though, Joseph con­firmed that a pro­pos­al for this change was made to CFU mem­bers about two years ago, while Rick­etts said it came from a re­cent meet­ing and there was no re­sis­tance from the mem­bers.

In fact, Ch­eney told Guardian Me­dia Sports that on­ly T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams ob­ject­ed to the de­ci­sion to change the qual­i­fy­ing for­mat but that came af­ter it was al­ready made.

Rick­etts said a meet­ing of all the CON­CA­CAF mem­bers was held soon af­ter the re­cent CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and CFU mem­bers all sup­port­ed the change.

"I sup­port­ed it, maybe not vot­ed, and it will cer­tain­ly have neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions on some teams. In fact, my own coun­try, be­cause we are in Pool B of the Na­tions' League, we have got to be care­ful, as we have got to be hope­ful, that oth­er teams can be the top teams and could take the lead, as it re­lates to our po­si­tion right now," Rick­etts said.

Both Rick­etts and Joseph pledged their sup­port for the new for­mat, say­ing it will re­quire re­gion­al mem­bers to put the nec­es­sary pro­grammes in place to be among the top qual­i­fy­ing na­tions.

But Rick­etts could not an­swer ques­tions on how CON­CA­CAF ar­rived at the fi­nal de­ci­sion, say­ing it was made at the CON­CA­CAF Coun­cil and tak­en to the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship, where no ob­jec­tions were raised.

"It was tabled at a meet­ing we had and I sup­pose you would have had op­tions to dis­agree or not to dis­agree, but it was pre­sent­ed and I per­son­al­ly liked it, so I sup­port­ed it. And I would think if you nev­er agreed, you could have ex­pressed your de­sire and ex­pressed your dis­agree­ment, but no­body did so it means there­fore, it was tak­en that all of us would have sup­port­ed it," Rick­etts ex­plained.

Joseph said they could look at it from the stand­point of the for­mat putting teams at a dis­ad­van­tage, or they can see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put the right pro­gramme in place to fa­cil­i­tate de­vel­op­ment and bet­ter their per­for­mances in the fu­ture.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, TTFA pres­i­dent John-Williams re­fused to com­ment, say­ing he want­ed to go through the right chan­nels.

Mean­while, for­mer CON­CA­CAF and CFU pres­i­dent Austin Jack Warn­er said the change was done de­lib­er­ate­ly to get back at him.

"It was done in a most clan­des­tine man­ner by Mr Sunil Gu­lati, of the US Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion, the de­fac­to pres­i­dent of CON­CA­CAF, and this was done to get at Jack Warn­er. In a se­cret meet­ing in New York, he sat down with the pres­i­dents, who have no re­al pow­er cause he has it, and said since they can­not get Jack Warn­er, let them go af­ter T&T. That was done to keep T&T out, and that they nev­er, ever again, have to face the hu­mil­i­a­tion they faced in 2017."

Warn­er, of course, was re­fer­ring to the 2-1 de­feat T&T hand­ed to the Unit­ed States in Oc­to­ber 2017 at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va which dumped them out the last World Cup in Rus­sia.

How­ev­erm, he said it would have been pos­si­ble for the CFU to get the de­ciswion ovetru­end if they wished.

Said Warn­er, "The CFU, if they had one func­tion­ing, could de­mand a spe­cial meet­ing of the Con­gress, and call a meet­ing to over­turn that de­ci­sion. Or bet­ter yet ,write to the FI­FA be­cause they are be­ing un­fair. It is an in­jus­tice, it is wrong, it is meant to stran­gle the Caribbean and most im­por­tant­ly T&T, that the rich coun­tries are play­ing less match­es and the poor­er ones are play­ing more match­es. And worse again, the FI­FA rank­ing is flawed."

He al­so de­nied re­ports that the de­ci­sion had re­ceived the sup­port from the CFU, say­ing there was nev­er a meet­ing of the CFU and that the on­ly re­ceived the sup­port from the of­fices of Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica.