"Not all foot­ball leagues in the world op­er­ate the same," said Brent San­cho, a high-rank­ing mem­ber of T&T Pro League out­fit Cen­tral FC, as he re­spond­ed to state­ments from na­tion­al foot­ball team cap­tain Khaleem Hy­land that the T&T Pro League is not a re­al pro­fes­sion­al league on Mon­day.

Hy­land's com­ments were made on Au­gust 26 dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports af­ter a pub­lic out­cry by play­ers for fi­nan­cial help dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, where no fund­ing has been forth­com­ing from clubs, whether the play­ers are con­tract­ed to them or not.

The T&T cap­tain told said that as pro­fes­sion­al play­ers, they are ex­pect­ed to be on con­tracts, whether two or three-year con­tracts and they ought to have been paid through­out the pan­dem­ic, which is less than two years. The steady T&T cap­tain al­so called on the gov­ern­ment to re­sume its fund­ing to the Pro League but said it ought to be fol­lowed by strict mea­sures of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy from the clubs.

How­ev­er, San­cho, who said he could not speak on be­half of the League be­cause of its set-up, where every club has an equal say, not­ed that as a mem­ber of a club, he would say it is al­ways eas­i­er for peo­ple from the out­side look­ing in to make state­ments, but it is dif­fer­ent for those who are deal­ing with the is­sues.

"Every sin­gle club in the pro­fes­sion­al league in T&T has to pass a com­pli­ance test with the na­tion­al body and if they are to get fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment, they are to sub­mit their pay­roll, their ac­counts, busi­ness plan etc to the gov­ern­ment which is heav­i­ly scru­ti­nised. The sub­ven­tion as of re­cent, in 2016 the sub­ven­tions were pulled com­plete­ly dur­ing mid-sea­son when clubs would have al­ready bud­get­ted out and teams al­ready would have been spend­ing mon­ey.

Then the sub­ven­tion was $83,000 and that was yanked from nowhere. So imag­ine run­ning a busi­ness with that be­ing your bud­get and it has been com­plete­ly yanked. So now you have to go and find more mon­ey be­cause there is no pro league club that runs on a $50,000 or $30,000 bud­get. Nine­ty per cent of the clubs are run on a $100,000 month­ly bud­get and this is just pure salary, I'm not talk­ing about balls, bibs, wa­ter, ice, equip­ment, med­ical care and all these dif­fer­ent things. So where do you think that mon­ey is com­ing from. So to sug­gest that there's any­thing aloft is lu­di­crous be­cause the sub­ven­tion is on­ly a per­cent­age, be­tween 30-40 per cent of your over­all bud­get."

San­cho, the T&T Pro League act­ing chair­man, dis­agreed with Hy­land's in­sin­u­a­tion that all play­ers should be on ei­ther a two or three-year con­tracts, say­ing that is not true.

He said: "Not every league in the world op­er­ates the same. I played foot­ball in the USL and 90 per cent of the play­ers in the USL's con­tracts end­ed when the sea­son end­ed. You can have a two-year con­tract in the USL and un­der the rules, you can get cut af­ter year one. The MLS used to trade play­ers left, right and cen­tre. It had some­thing called a waiv­er, so let's be re­al here. The T&T Pro League is not the EPL, the T&T Pro League is not a La Liga, it doh op­er­ate so. All the leagues in world foot­ball are dif­fer­ent and have dif­fer­ent struc­tures and dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions."

San­cho fur­ther ex­plained that: "In T&T it de­pends on the club. Some clubs have con­tract play­ers for two years or three years. Be­fore Cen­tral FC was owed $3 mil­lion in prize monies, and be­fore the yank­ing of the sub­ven­tions, we lost two spon­sors and the sub­ven­tion in one year. We had a bud­get of $150, 000 a month and we had to find a way. Back in those days, all the big clubs had play­ers on two and three-year con­tracts, but ob­vi­ous­ly, over time, and par­tic­u­lar­ly over the past three years, there has been a down­turn in the econ­o­my and cubs had to tai­lor their suits ac­cord­ing­ly."