TTFA on verge of Equatorial Guinea, Serbia friendlies

"It (TTFA) is in the red," John-Williams said.

In spite of this, how­ev­er, his ne­go­ti­at­ing skills has land­ed the War­riors on the verge of friend­lies against Ser­bia and Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea next year. And Guardian Me­dia Sports learned that John-Williams is al­so locked in talks with a top Span­ish La Liga club, as well as Scot­land for match­es.

Af­ter two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es against Thai­land and Iran, the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion has not paid a sin­gle cent but has suc­cess­ful­ly arranged for its team to face Wales in Wrex­ham, Eng­land on March 20.

John-Williams is al­so set to sign on the dot­ted line to con­firm the match with Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea al­so in March in Spain, which will co­in­cide with a meet­ing be­tween Scot­land and Kaza­khstan.

The War­riors, it is un­der­stood will al­so play against the "Scots" in Marbel­la, Spain, once fi­nal arrange­ments have been sort­ed out.

The lo­cal foot­ball boss told Guardian Me­dia Sports his as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so still in talks with Ser­bia for a match on Feb­ru­ary next year, right here in Trinidad.

"We are at­tempt­ing to get Ser­bia to pay its own air­fare but we will take care of ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals and ap­pear­ance fee. To achieve this we have to get a spon­sor and are at­tempt­ing to do so right now," said John-Williams, who ruled out the use of the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, to house the Ser­bians as it will not be com­plet­ed in time.

He said be­cause the as­so­ci­a­tion has ab­solute­ly no mon­ey in its cof­fers, it has had to ask the fed­er­a­tions of teams the War­riors are play­ing in, to pay its ex­pens­es.

"Apart from the all-ex­pens­es-paid trips, the team (War­riors) al­so re­ceive ap­pear­ance fees, which we use to pay the play­ers their match fees. Be­cause of the lit­tle to no fund­ing in the cof­fers of the TTFA, we have had to re­sort to this," John-Williams said.

He not­ed that al­though on­ly two match­es have been con­firmed to date, he will give a guar­an­tee that the team will play a min­i­mum of at least four good in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es be­fore the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.