T&T's FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing match against Guyana will not be played here in T&T, a source close to the sit­u­a­tion con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day.

It will now, most-like­ly be played in Cu­ra­cao, where an all-ex­pense-cov­ered op­por­tu­ni­ty will be pre­sent­ed to the teams, be­ing a CON­CA­CAF venue.

It is un­der­stood that the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee is at­tempt­ing to ne­go­ti­ate with coun­tries that are will­ing to help them fi­nan­cial­ly and oth­er­wise, since ne­go­ti­a­tions with Guyana broke down, due to a re­quest by the Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion for T&T to pay for ho­tel and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Should the match be played out­side of T&T, the Ter­ry Fen­wick-coached team will miss out on the ad­van­tage of play­ing in front of a home crowd.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, who spoke to Guardian Me­di­aS­ports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said it is dis­ap­point­ing, an un­car­ing and un­pro­fes­sion­al gov­ern­ment has blocked the idea of a foot­ball bub­ble where the match could have been played, as is be­ing done in many coun­tries around the world.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was told that a de­ci­sion on the match was tak­en to the Cab­i­net, where 12 to 15 min­is­ters sup­port­ed the match be­ing played in T&T, but it ap­peared not to have got­ten the ap­proval of the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, un­der the ad­vice of Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram.

Paras­ram when con­tact­ed on Thurs­day, said Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh had al­ready spo­ken about the match and did not want to add to his com­ments.

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe could not be reached for com­ment. Guardian Me­dia Sports sent ques­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about the match via What­sApp on Tues­day but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time yes­ter­day.

The nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was ex­pect­ed to sub­mit a re­sponse to CON­CA­CAF by Thurs­day (Feb­ru­ary 18th), but chair­man Hadad ad­mit­ted they had re­ceived an ex­ten­sion to this date.

It is still un­clear as to the rea­sons why the match was blanked, the source ex­plained, com­ing at a time when the coun­try and gov­ern­ment are ac­ces­si­ble to more in­for­ma­tion than last year when ap­proval for the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) was grant­ed.

"It is con­fus­ing be­cause the gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Health could have sourced more in­fo about stag­ing bub­ble events from the many coun­tries stag­ing them now," the source said.

They added: "So are they say­ing that coun­tries like Guyana, Ja­maica and all these coun­tries are ca­pa­ble of hold­ing bub­ble events and we can't in T&T?"

Ear­ly yes­ter­day Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee called on the pub­lic to ral­ly around the gov­ern­ment, be­liev­ing it was well with­in its rights to take the nec­es­sary steps to pre­vent the new vari­ants of the COVID19 virus from reach­ing our shores.

"We will do our very best to keep this thing in a hot bub­ble. I un­der­stand, and the com­mit­tee un­der­stands the po­si­tion of the gov­ern­ment, con­cern­ing COVID19. They have done a damn good job here, so we need to work with them and trust them," Hadad said.

He not­ed fur­ther: "At the time of the CPL, COVID19 was in a dif­fer­ent place from to­day. So where we are to­day, all the cir­cum­stances are dif­fer­ent, so we have to con­sid­er things a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. So we will work with the gov­ern­ment to find a so­lu­tion."

The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) re­ceived a $6M in­vest­ment from the gov­ern­ment for six club fran­chise teams, with ex­pec­ta­tions of re­turns in the end. To date, how­ev­er, it is un­sure of the re­turns, de­spite a prop­er­ly-run, COVID19-free tour­na­ment.

On­ly last week, na­tion­al coach Fen­wick lashed out at the gov­ern­ment for its re­luc­tance to ap­prove the foot­ball bub­ble when the CPL re­ceived the go-ahead. Ac­cord­ing to Fen­wick, his team was re­cent­ly tak­en in by the Unit­ed States for an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly, and his team and staff were test­ed every day.

De­spite a wor­ry­ing 7-0 re­sult, how­ev­er, Fen­wick's team was sub­ject­ed to an­oth­er 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od when they re­turned home.