The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion was set to re­ceive more than the re­port­ed $25 mil­lion from the now con­tro­ver­sial Avec ap­par­el deal, said gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day.

Ramd­han's com­ments came even as the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion is prepar­ing to take on the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport- FI­FA, through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS), for a de­ci­sion by the FI­FA to im­ple­ment a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball fol­low­ing FI­FA au­dit vis­it in Feb­ru­ary by a three-mem­ber fi­nance team that rep­re­sent­ed both FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF and an in­de­pen­dent au­di­tor.

On Tues­day the FI­FA agreed to send its nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic af­ter its mem­bers were dis­sat­is­fied with the cur­rent sta­tus of the TTFA, as well as its plans to treat with the fi­nan­cial is­sues. How­ev­er, this did not go down too well with Ramd­han and his col­leagues at the TTFA.

The gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who is a for­mer ref­er­ee who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the FI­FA World Cup in 1998 in France, has been the front­line play­er for the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion on sev­er­al is­sues re­cent­ly, in­clud­ing the Feb­ru­ary 25 Avec ap­par­el con­tract which he signed. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports that the arrange­ments around the ap­par­el deal are what's usu­al­ly done around the world, and in­stead of the $25 mil­lion that the TTFA is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive over the next four years, it will re­ceive about $30 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od.

In his ex­pla­na­tion, Ramd­han said: “I was told and I am con­vinced that this is the way ap­par­els deals are for­mu­lat­ed. It is go­ing to be more than the TT$25 mil­lion when you do the arith­metic, it's clos­er to $30 mil­lion. The Avec deal is a re­al deal, I signed the deal and be­fore I signed it I asked the same ques­tions that the pub­lic is ask­ing be­cause I was not clear. It's not that I ques­tioned the deal, but I want­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion for my­self to find out how it could im­pact the TTFA neg­a­tive­ly, and I was as­sured, based on the writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion I have, it does not af­fect us at all.”

The Avec deal was re­vealed to the pub­lic on Feb­ru­ary 26 and it was ex­pect­ed to be used to wipe out a $50 mil­lion debt of the TTFA.

Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­han: “We get the free kits, we have the out­lets to sell the fan jer­seys and through that 80 per cent of the prof­it will come back to us and the oth­er 20 per cent will stay with the Sports & Games, and he has al­so reached out to Cana­da, Mi­a­mi and all the air­ports, Trinidad, To­ba­go to mar­ket this, so we don't see sell­ing 7,500 shirts as a prob­lem. That is achiev­able."

He con­tin­ued, "In ad­di­tion to the 7,500 repli­ca T-shirts, the TTFA must al­so be able to sell £125,000 which is the equiv­a­lent of $1,250,000 in gen­er­al ap­par­el to be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of 80 per cent of the prof­its on the sale."

Ramd­han point­ed out that: “When we start to play the foot­ball that we plan to play we know fans will want shirts and mem­o­ra­bil­ia just like in 2006 with the So­ca War­riors.”

A break­down of the con­tract showed a to­tal of US$1,400,000 to be giv­en in kits to the TTFA over four years, as well as an an­nu­al re­quire­ment for the TTFA to sell 7,500 repli­cas at US$70 (TT$475.00) for one. This is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate a to­tal of US$2,100,000.

He said an an­nu­al mer­chan­dise re­quire­ment of £125,000 will lead to a re­turn of US$978,000.

Mean­while, with the re­cent im­ple­men­ta­tion of the FI­FA nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee, it is un­sure if the deal will go on as planned as the FI­FA is set to walk with its man­age­ment team that will be ex­am­in­ing all con­tracts be­fore go­ing for­ward with them.