Soca Warriors Online
The home of Trinidad and Tobago football
A friend once told me we live in a world where right is called wrong and wrong labelled right. No truer words especially when one looks at the present scenario involving the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association and FIFA, the world governing body for the sport of football.
The country stands to face severe emotional effects from an equally emotional action by the United T&T Football Association (TTFA), Richard Ferguson, the owner and manager of T&T Pro League campaigners Terminix La Horquetta Rangers has said.
The “United TTFA” group yesterday sent correspondence to FIFA’S local representative attorney, Donna Denbow, seeking bilateral talks as a solution to its impending legal battle with football’s world governing body in the Trinidad and Tobago High Court.
Not very often has public legal order been able to force FIFA to submit to the rule of state law. In fact, throughout its 116-year existence football’s world governing body has meticulously designed its legal framework to insulate itself as much as possible from the state laws of its various member associations as well as larger supra-national institutions such as the European Union and others like it.
“[…] Some opposed to our resistance to Fifa talk about our supposed endangerment of ‘the youth’. But, in effect, their moaning merely teaches youth, by example, the abandonment of democracy, principle, justice, and fair play, for the prevalent values of our national intellectual and spiritual life: hypocrisy, cowardice, self interest, and convenience. It sickens me to my stomach.
THE former TT Football Association (TTFA) executive, led by ousted president William Wallace, is hoping to settle their dispute with FIFA out of court, suggesting the matter be resolved through mediation.
FIFA, the world governing body for football, is set to be defended at all cost for its position to appoint a Normalisation Committee to take charge of local football and thereby ousting the legitimately elected team of president William Wallace, Clynt Taylor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Susan Joseph-Warrick when the case comes up on June 16. FIFA was given 28 days to file its defence which was served on it on May 19.
Football’s governing body FIFA turned down another offer by former Trinidad and Tobago Football Association executives to have mediated discussions as a solution to an impasse between the two bodies, which is headed to the local courts.
Since my last article a few weeks ago relating to this TTFA/FIFA saga, I genuinely thought things would have gotten better. How silly was I? Every day, a different headline appears in the media and I have been following the battle intensely.