Last week, the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) an­nounced that it had “no­ti­fied the Su­per­vi­sor of In­sol­ven­cy of its in­tent to make a pro­pos­al un­der the Bank­rupt­cy and In­sol­ven­cy Act of Trinidad and To­ba­go that would en­able a struc­tured ap­proach to the re­struc­tur­ing of the TTFA and the prepa­ra­tion of a fair, trans­par­ent, and ac­cept­able pay­ment pro­pos­al to ad­dress the TTFA’s debt.”

The process, ac­cord­ing to the NC, would al­low the TTFA to man­age its op­er­a­tions and pro­vide a stay from all le­gal pro­ceed­ings and cred­i­tor ac­tions for a pe­ri­od of up to six months, there­by se­cur­ing the TTFA’s as­sets while the man­age­ment and NC work un­der the over­sight of the in­de­pen­dent Trustee to de­vel­op and present a pro­pos­al to ad­dress the TTFA’s debt to all cred­i­tors.

In oth­er words, the move would en­sure the TTFA’s cur­rent as­sets are pro­tect­ed from le­gal ac­tion by in­di­vid­ual cred­i­tors and that every­body owed by the TTFA would be treat­ed eq­ui­tably.

Cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go, which has all but turned its back on lo­cal foot­ball, would have seen this as a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment – a struc­tured ap­proach adopt­ed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball to deal with its debt in a man­ner that would not cost tax­pay­ers a cent.

The re­sponse among foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors (or stake­hold­ers, as some pre­fer to be called) was, how­ev­er, mixed, and in some in­stances down­right hos­tile.

­­In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Sel­by Browne, who heads the vet­er­an foot­ballers’ as­so­ci­a­tion, said he felt dis­re­spect­ed, and that there should have been pri­or con­sul­ta­tion. He want­ed to call a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter. Why? To dis­cuss what, Mr Browne?

Os­mond Down­er, Head of the Ref­er­ees’ As­so­ci­a­tion, and me­dia-or­dained foot­ball con­sti­tu­tion ex­pert point­ed out (to Browne and, maybe to the re­porter who quot­ed him) that the NC had the au­thor­i­ty, un­der the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion, to do what it did. And by the way Mr Ian Prescott (Ex­press re­porter), the TTFA has nei­ther been placed in bank­rupt­cy nor made in­sol­vent, a fact made abun­dant­ly clear in the TTFA’s news re­lease. But why let the truth get in the way of a good head­line?

Oth­er foot­ball stake­hold­ers – let’s call them what they are, Ad­min­is­tra­tors with ta­ban­ca – when asked about the move wan­ton­ly blamed the NC for the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball and chal­lenged its abil­i­ty to han­dle TTFA busi­ness. Hold on. Are we miss­ing some­thing? Aren’t these the same in­di­vid­u­als who have been around for the past umpteen years, over­see­ing var­i­ous as­pects of lo­cal foot­ball, while the TTFA was ac­cu­mu­lat­ing $100 mil­lion in debt.

These same in­di­vid­u­als are now de­mand­ing that the NC get com­mit­tees work­ing, restart the pro league, ap­point na­tion­al coach­es and tech­ni­cal teams, get our na­tion­al foot­ballers back in­to train­ing, and or­ga­nize in­ter­na­tion­al warm-up match­es. How? And with what mon­ey? It seems id­i­ot­ic to say it, but… haven’t they no­ticed that we’re in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic, that the TTFA is $100 mil­lion in debt, and the NC is strug­gling to keep things afloat on a stipend from FI­FA. It’s by no means busi­ness as usu­al.

More­over, it is you, foot­ball gu­rus, Messrs Wal­lace, Look Loy, Down­er, Browne, John Willams, et al, and your fel­low as­so­ciates (and pre­de­ces­sors), who brought Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball to where it is to­day.

The NC was ap­point­ed to save you from your­selves. Its mem­bers were nowhere around when the rot that char­ac­ter­ized the ad­min­is­tra­tion of lo­cal foot­ball was tak­ing place. Robert Hadad was run­ning a suc­cess­ful busi­ness; Nigel Ro­mano, a suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer in bank­ing; Nicholas Gomez a suc­cess­ful ac­count­ing and busi­ness con­sul­tan­cy; Judy Daniel a rep­utable and suc­cess­ful law prac­tice. See the com­mon thread? These peo­ple have been put in charge of lo­cal foot­ball to help... be­cause you couldn’t, and still can’t run it suc­cess­ful­ly. They aren’t the prob­lem, you are.

The mem­bers of the NC all have proven track records of suc­cess. Hear this: They are go­ing to find a so­lu­tion to re­pay the cred­i­tors that you (the for­mer lead­ers of the TTFA) owe mon­ey; they are go­ing to put in place mod­ern sys­tems gov­er­nance and con­trol to en­sure that the ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball is on a sound and sus­tain­able foot­ing.

These four in­di­vid­u­als are all re­spect­ed in the fields of en­deav­our, Cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go trust them. When they (the mem­bers of the NC) hand the TTFA back to you, you can be con­fi­dent that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty will be far more will­ing to con­sid­er in­vest­ing in foot­ball and it was 20 months ago.

And by the way, none of them is do­ing it for the stipend FI­FA pays them. Rather than at­tack them, I sug­gest you try to help them help you. If you can’t, hush, and let them fix the mess you made.

Derek Der­ron

Fete match gu­ru

St James