WAL­TER AL­IBEY

"It's ei­ther we can af­ford to be a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball league or we can't," said Sam Phillip, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the T&T Pro League when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

"But the idea of pro­fes­sion­al play­ers be­ing asked to work will def­i­nite­ly be a no, no as it will set a dan­ger­ous prece­dence in the game," said Phillip. He added in re­sponse to sug­ges­tions by St Ann's Rangers own­er and founder Richard Fakoory that T&T Pro League play­ers should seek em­ploy­ment out­side of be­ing pro­fes­sion­al play­ers to sup­pli­ment their in­come from foot­ball.

In the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Fakoory who is al­so vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Pro League made the com­ment in re­sponse to North East Stars' new busi­ness mod­el which en­ables it to pay all play­ers a ba­sic salary of $2,500 to $3,000 month­ly and de­vel­op them holis­ti­cal­ly through a com­pre­hen­sive acad­e­my for sale to in­ter­na­tion­al clubs. The San­gre Grande based-team has al­so im­ple­ment­ed a cap of $5,000.

North East Stars new month­ly wage struc­ture has al­so re­cieved sup­ports from Brent San­cho, the own­er of Cen­tral FC, the for­mer three-time cham­pi­on club. But yes­ter­day, Phillip said to ask a pro­fes­sion­al play­ers to seek jobs is sense­less and opens up the league to de­bate on its sta­tus as a pro league. "It can lead to it now be­ing see as a Se­mi Pro League that will find it­self com­pet­ing with the T&T Su­per League which is some­thing they do not want," Phillip ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Phillip the $2,500- $3,000 wage idea is noth­ing new, as the League al­ready car­ries a min­i­mum salary of $2,500 a month. But he re­vealed that at­tempts are be­ing made to in­tro­duce a salary cap of no more than $5,000, the most that can be paid to a play­er per month, which is sim­i­lar to the North East Stars mod­el.

"Of course we can­not tell clubs how much they can pay their play­ers, but if the cap is im­ple­ment­ed and clubs that paid play­ers more than what is stip­u­lat­ed, then sud­den­ly they can buck­le un­der fi­nan­cial pres­sure and we (the league) will not be able to help those play­ers," Phillip ex­plained.

Mem­bers of the Board of the T&T Pro League which in­cludes a mem­ber from each club along with Dex­ter Skeene, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and Phillips, are set to meet next month to de­cide on a way for­ward.