SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Lo­cal foot­ball has been mis­man­aged for decades and the fi­nan­cial woes of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) did not start un­der the David John-Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion. The cur­rent as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers al­so no longer sup­port the Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive led by William Wal­lace.

This was the view ex­pressed by for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er and Sports Min­is­ter Brent San­cho yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, San­cho said FI­FA should have ap­point­ed a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee near­ly three decades ago to stop the fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­eties of the then TTFA ex­ec­u­tive.

“Every pres­i­dent that has come in­to pow­er has fall­en short when it comes to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and hence the rea­son why the as­so­ci­a­tion is sad­dled with close to a $100 mil­lion in debt,” San­cho told host Na­talee Legore.

San­cho’s com­ment came even as FI­FA was meet­ing at its 70th Con­gress yes­ter­day. Many were ex­pect­ing the TTFA to face sanc­tion dur­ing the event due to the Unit­ed TTFA’s court ac­tion against FI­FA in the lo­cal court. How­ev­er, FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no said yes­ter­day the mat­ter was not on the agen­da and it was not dealt with then.

Hours af­ter the con­gress, how­ev­er, FI­FA sec­re­tary gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura sent a let­ter to FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad ad­vis­ing that they were giv­ing Wal­lace’s team a new dead­line of Sep­tem­ber 23 to with­draw the le­gal ac­tion against FI­FA. Bar­ring this, Samoura said the rel­e­vant FI­FA bod­ies will meet to de­cide on the sus­pen­sion of the TTFA.

San­cho told Legore that the struc­tures that should have been in place at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el of the as­so­ci­a­tion were not and over the years, suc­ces­sive pres­i­dents had been vot­ed out of of­fice be­cause of it.

He said de­spite their cam­paign promis­es ahead of last No­vem­ber’s AGM, even the re­cent­ly-elect­ed Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion was no dif­fer­ent.

“We brought in the William Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion to the floor be­cause the mem­ber­ship felt that the plat­form that they placed, that they cam­paigned on, which was trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, was the right one for us and of course we saw in the first four months of their op­er­a­tion where they would have ran up a debt of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15 mil­lion, that they too were cul­pa­ble in the cul­ture that has de­stroyed foot­ball for so many years,” San­cho said.

He said the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee head­ed by Hadad was put in place to en­sure the TTFA’s debts were paid and the de­ci­sion by Wal­lace to chal­lenge those ap­point­ments in the court does not re­flect the views of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­ber­ship.

“From a mem­ber­ship point of view in the TTFA, they feel as if we are be­ing hi­jacked and kid­napped in­to this sce­nario - that the lead­er­ship of the TTFA has not shown the view of the mem­ber­ship. The mere fact is that four to five in­di­vid­u­als are mak­ing de­ci­sions on be­half of not just the mem­ber­ship but T&T,” San­cho said.

San­cho said it was al­so “ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous” that the as­so­ci­a­tion is in so much debt.

“The mem­ber­ship has been let down so many times and it is star­tling to see that a lot of the ad­min­is­tra­tors have been in­volved in the sport for 30-plus years,” he said.

“This is not a new be­hav­iour, this is learnt be­hav­iour and a pat­tern which has tak­en place for so many years. So many of them who are cur­rent­ly here now were part of FI­FA, were part of the TTFA for so many years and con­tin­ue to ex­em­pli­fy that type of be­hav­iour.”

He said lo­cal foot­ball is in des­per­ate need of change.

San­cho said if FI­FA de­cides to place any sanc­tions on T&T, the young gen­er­a­tion of foot­ballers are the ones who will suf­fer the con­se­quences as a sus­pen­sion can lead to T&T be­ing kicked out of the World Cup cy­cle.