Normalisation or no normalization committee? These were the questions being asked by football administrators, fans, coaches and supporters as news spread that FIFA and CONCACAF planned to send such a body here to stabilise the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) amid a bleak financial situation that has brought the sport to a virtual standstill.
Last Friday, former T&T technical director Kendall Walkes took out a garnishee order on the T&TFA’s accounts in a dispute over wrongful dismissal, thereby preventing any football-related transactions from taking place.
Last year, the embattled association, then led by David John-Williams, was also hit by a garnishee order by the T&T Futsal team, which was attempting to recover just under $600,000.
Yesterday, Anton Corneal, another former technical director who, like Walkes, had to take the TTFA to court for unpaid wages and other expenses, said he did not want to tell the TTFA how to run its affairs. But in giving details on the introduction of a normalisation committee into a country, Corneal said it could help stabilise T&T football.
“A normalization committee is going to bring some stability. It’s going to try to look at things in the most objective way, using people who don’t really have a great history of the programmes. So it’s someone just looking on to see how you can get that association back in line,” Corneal told Guardian Media.
“In saying that, it takes some time. A normalisation committee would not come in for three months or five months. It’s gonna take a year, sometimes two years, so if that’s the direction, I don’t know what the effects are going to be but it should be our very last resort.”
Corneal, son of former national standout and coach Alvin Corneal, said he could not say if such a committee was needed at this time, as he did not the details on how much the was in debt, a sense of where money was spent and how it was spent and what budget it came from.
“I don’t have the facts but in saying that they will need guidance and probably going to the mother body, which would be the FIFA, they would need some sort of guidance at least now, because it is true that accounts are frozen, which makes it extremely difficult for any association,” the younger Corneal said.
However, he dismissed thoughts that a normalisation committee will be embarrassing for the country, saying it has been done in other territories before, including Guyana four years ago.
“It has happened in other places before and again, whatever is best. This is just another measure to help get some of the programmes back on stream. It’s another measure, where a different body that is going to prioritise differently, just to make sure that when an association is running in a country again, everybody is back on the same level, because right now, some people are owed some are not owed and I am sure that they do not have the financial access to just wipe out all the bills and money that are owed to all the people and organisations that they owe,” Corneal said.
On Wednesday, TTFA technical committee chairman Keith Look Loy blamed FIFA for the financial situation the TTFA has found itself in, saying the world body allowed the mismanagement of the John-Williams-led administration to go on for the past four years, yet they (FIFA) had been withholding millions of dollars of funds for the current TTFA executive in Zurich.