Charges of gross mis­man­age­ment of the af­fairs of T&T foot­ball have been lev­elled against the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) af­ter on­ly the first of its two-year term of of­fice.

The same mem­ber­ship, who was re­spon­si­ble for the re­moval of the William Wal­lace-led Unit­ed TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) from of­fice last year, dis­ap­proves of the way the sport is cur­rent­ly be­ing man­aged un­der the NC, led by chair­man Robert Hadad, in­clud­ing the non-pay­ment of salaries to the staff, play­ers and coach­es of the se­nior na­tion­al men's team which is well in­to the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers for the Qatar World Cup 2022; no au­dit­ed and com­pli­ance com­mit­tee, no an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ings (AGM), no au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2020; in­creas­ing debt and poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, and the mis­man­age­ment of the World Cup match against Guyana that was played in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

The game was card­ed to be a T&T home game at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain on March 25 but the NC's lengthy de­lay in putting things in place led to the gov­ern­ment blank­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.  

On Sat­ur­day, the mem­bers de­liv­ered a sting­ing 15-page doc­u­ment, which was al­so sent to FI­FA Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura, that stat­ed the NC has failed to car­ry out the in­struc­tions of the sport's world gov­ern­ing body- to nor­malise T&T foot­ball and pre­pare it for elec­tion.

Point­ing to the man­date giv­en by FI­FA, the mem­bers claim: "You were ap­point­ed on the 27th March 2020 and you were man­dat­ed by FI­FA to ex­e­cute the fol­low­ing dur­ing a two-year term: 1. Es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan that is im­ple­mentable by the TTFA; 2. Re­view and amend the TTFA Statutes (and oth­er reg­u­la­tions where nec­es­sary) and en­sure their com­pli­ance with the FI­FA Statutes and re­quire­ments be­fore du­ly sub­mit­ting them for ap­proval to the TTFA Con­gress; 3. Run the TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs; 4. Or­gan­ise and con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

"To date, ei­ther there has been no co­he­sive and struc­tured debt re­pay­ment plan pre­sent­ed to the mem­bers of the TTFA or the mem­bers have not been made aware of such plan by the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to liq­ui­date the out­stand­ing debts to coach­es, play­ers, tech­ni­cal staff, TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tive staff and oth­er cred­i­tors. Rather, there seems to be a greater con­cern with set­ting up a “Uni­fied League” than de­vel­op­ing and pre­sent­ing a well-or­gan­ised and prac­ti­cal debt re­pay­ment strat­e­gy as man­dat­ed."

Hadad told Guardian Me­dia Sports in Jan­u­ary the debt had risen from an es­ti­mat­ed $50 mil­lion to a whop­ping $70 mil­lion, but his ac­tions to con­tain or re­duce it, have been crit­i­cised by the mem­ber­ship, which stat­ed: "Since your ap­point­ment on the 27th of March 2020, there seems to be an in­crease in ex­pen­di­ture for the TTFA. In fact, Mr Adri­an Ro­main was hired as man­ag­er of the se­nior men’s team how­ev­er, Mr Basil Thomp­son was al­ready em­ployed as the team’s man­ag­er. As such, Mr Thomp­son now holds the po­si­tion of Lo­gis­tics Man­ag­er, a post non-ex­is­tent in our Con­sti­tu­tion. This is clear­ly an un­nec­es­sary ex­pense that you have ap­proved and it has in­creased the debt of the TTFA even fur­ther.

"In ad­di­tion, you have hired a num­ber of high-priced for­eign coach­es such as the se­nior’s men’s na­tion­al team head coach at twen­ty thou­sand US dol­lars ($20,000USD) per month, the goal­keep­ing coach at nine thou­sand US dol­lars ($9,000USD) per month and the as­sis­tant coach to the na­tion­al team at eight thou­sand US dol­lars ($8,000USD) per month. As we are sure you are aware, they are cur­rent­ly the high­est-paid coach­ing staff in the re­gion. In an al­ready cash-strapped en­vi­ron­ment, would it not be more pru­dent to re­tain our well ca­pa­ble lo­cal coach­es for a rea­son­able cost? We the mem­bers are of the opin­ion that this is not fi­nan­cial­ly pru­dent and it clear­ly il­lus­trates poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment. Which is con­trary to your in­struc­tions giv­en by FI­FA."

Hadad was not re­spon­si­ble for the ap­point­ments of the se­nior na­tion­al team staff and coach­es as they were made un­der the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er, T&T fut­sal coach Con­stan­tine Kon­stin, beach soc­cer coach Ramiro Amarelle and women's coach James Thomas were hired by the NC.

The Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion was al­so re­spon­si­ble for the ap­point­ment of the much-need­ed stand­ing com­mit­tees, but all of them were aban­doned by the NC. The mem­ber­ship al­so sought to ques­tion this move, say­ing: "Ar­ti­cle 40.2 of the TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion states: ‘mem­bers of the stand­ing com­mit­tees shall be des­ig­nat­ed for a term of of­fice of four years.’ It is al­so note­wor­thy that FI­FA’s Stat­ues al­so state that stand­ing com­mit­tees shall ad­vise and as­sist the ex­ec­u­tive. FI­FA, on the ap­point­ment of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, did not dis­band our ex­ist­ing Com­mit­tees which were im­ple­ment­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. Rather, they dis­band­ed the ex­ec­u­tive and ap­point­ed the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. Fail­ure to ap­point the afore­men­tioned Stand­ing Com­mit­tees has re­sult­ed in a lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty with the stake­hold­ers of the TTFA, as well as a gen­er­al dis­trust be­tween the mem­bers and the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. Fur­ther­more, the ab­sence of the afore­men­tioned com­mit­tees un­der­mines the in­tegri­ty of the as­so­ci­a­tion and min­imis­es our chances of op­ti­mal per­for­mance in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na.

The stand­ing com­mit­tees ap­point­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion are Fi­nance Com­mit­tee; Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee; Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee for TTFA Com­pe­ti­tions; Tech­ni­cal and De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee; Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee; Le­gal Com­mit­tee; Com­mit­tee for Women’s Foot­ball; Youth Foot­ball and De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee; Sports Med­i­cine Com­mit­tee; Play­ers’ Sta­tus Com­mit­tee; and the Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee.

Hadad was al­so ac­cused of fail­ing to run the dai­ly af­fairs of the sport and has not put to­geth­er de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for the coun­try's Un­der-13, U-15, and U-17 foot­ball teams, as well as a pro­gramme for the women's teams.

Mean­while, na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, de­spite lead­ing the So­ca War­riors to four points in two match­es to date, has come un­der fire for an al­leged in­ci­dent on the eve of the team's de­par­ture for match­es against Guyana and Puer­to Ri­co in March. The out­burst by Fen­wick had been the sec­ond such in­ci­dent dur­ing his stint in T&T foot­ball and the fail­ure to deal with the re­cent in­ci­dent against TTFA me­dia of­fi­cer Shaun Fuentes was no­ticed by the mem­ber­ship.

"As mem­bers of the TTFA, we would like to know what dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures were tak­en against Mr Fen­wick for such ag­gres­sive and dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­iour. Is this the type of be­hav­iour we al­low to be swept un­der the car­pet?"

Con­cerns about Fen­wick's con­tract which was agreed on by the pre­vi­ous foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion were raised with in­con­sis­ten­cies and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­ing at the top of the list, along­side re­port­ing re­quire­ment. With no tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee avail­able, the Eng­lish­man re­ports di­rect­ly to Hadad and his com­mit­tee mem­bers.

Mean­while, a re­lease from the TTFA on Sat­ur­day said "the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee of the TTFA re­ceived a let­ter from the mem­ber­ship on May 1 which they un­der­stand and will deal with the is­sues this week".  

The re­lease stat­ed: "The Nor­mal­i­sa­tion process was ful­ly al­lowed to func­tion as of No­vem­ber 2020 and the process for any Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion is dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing. FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF con­tin­ue to guide this process as we work to­wards res­ur­rect­ing foot­ball out of its dol­drums, which has been made more com­pli­cat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

"It must be not­ed that many de­tails out­lined in the doc­u­ment are in­ac­cu­rate and based on as­sump­tions. We will en­deav­our to im­prove on the com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels be­tween the TTFA and its mem­ber­ship so that the mem­bers are pro­vid­ed with ac­cu­rate sources of in­for­ma­tion on these mat­ters, with the aim of fos­ter­ing a stronger re­la­tion­ship be­tween all par­ties."