Wallace unveils TTFA Presidential plans

This was re­vealed by William Wal­lace, the Unit­ed TTFA pres­i­den­tial can­di­date at a break­fast launch at the Pres­i­dent's Box at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day, dur­ing the de­liv­ery of a com­pre­hen­sive pre­sen­ta­tion of his group's man­i­festo, which showed that well over US$30 mil­lion will be gen­er­at­ed from in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies around the world alone. The com­pa­nies are based in In­dia, Switzer­land and the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries.

Wal­lace, a suc­cess sto­ry at the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) for many years, not­ed al­so that his group will still at­tempt to source fund­ing from gov­ern­ment, FI­FA and cor­po­rate T&T.

Some of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies pro­vid­ed Wal­lace with let­ters of com­mit­ment such as Spec­trum Brands, which has agreed to con­struct six small-goal/fut­sal fields across T&T for a three-year pe­ri­od, while a new­ly in­tro­duced top tier foot­ball sys­tem, fea­tur­ing a League 1 and League 2 tour­na­ment, at a to­tal val­ue of $16,800,000, will be fund­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, such as VAR­TA, Ul­tra PRO, Pfis­ter, PRO-SENSE, Rem­ing­ton, Din­go, FOR­TIS, Bir­dola, Sports­man, Bread­man and Kwik­set etc.

Nike ex­pect­ed­ly will pro­vide uni­forms for all the coun­try's foot­ball teams: set up a re­tail sports out­let at one of the sta­dia, which will at­tract more busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty Wal­lace be­lieves, as well as pro­vide a size­able con­tri­bu­tion to the Unit­ed TTFA, which the No­vem­ber 24 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date said, is still to be ne­go­ti­at­ed.

He said un­der the Unit­ed TTFA, T&T Women foot­ball will have an in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sor for the first time.

Wal­lace said the funds will be need­ed to re­pair a sport dam­aged un­der the David John-Williams-led ad­min­is­tra­tion. He point­ed to the coun­try's youth, se­nior men and women's pro­grammes, the coun­try's in­abil­i­ty to qual­i­fy for the Olympics and World Cup tour­na­ments, the string of loss­es by the coun­try's se­nior team and an al­most ir­repara­ble debt which has led to on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with cred­i­tors etc, to clear it.

The event at­tract­ed a large cross-sec­tion of foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty which in­clud­ed Col­in Mur­ray, Os­mund Down­er and Joseph Tay­lor (ref­er­ees), Kei­th Jef­frey (San Juan Jabloteh), Brent San­cho (Cen­tral FC/Pro League) and Clay­ton Mor­ris.

Wal­lace said arrange­ments for a joint part­ner­ship agree­ment will be reached with a com­pa­ny to fin­ish the Home of Foot­ball and have it man­aged at a prof­it-shar­ing ba­sis.

Wal­lace called on the mem­bers of the elec­torate to not vote for him and his slate, but vote for the sport of foot­ball.

He first sought to clear the air on the mis­per­cep­tion that a vote for him is throw­ing sup­port be­hind his group's out-spo­ken mem­ber Kei­th Look Loy. He then asked, "What has Look Loy done for peo­ple to be afraid of him. What has he done wrong?"

Wal­lace said de­spite be­ing Board mem­bers, they are still un­aware of what the debt of the TTFA is at present.

He said, "It is against this back­ground that we seek help for foot­ball out­side of T&T. We agreed that lever­ag­ing stronger cur­ren­cies will be cru­cial to the sur­vival of the FA. Of course, with good gov­er­nance, with the ma­jor tenets be­ing hon­esty, trans­paren­cy and in­clu­sive­ness, we ex­pect to win back cor­po­rate T&T af­ter No­vem­ber 24. The suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships that the unit­ed TTFA has been able to es­tab­lished out­side T&T, demon­strate that once peo­ple with in­tegri­ty come for­ward to lead, peo­ple are will­ing to help."

Wal­lace point­ed out the Unit­ed TTFA will al­so move to get na­tion­al foot­ball back on the tele­vi­sion by hir­ing Flows­ports founder and di­rec­tor Sean Ri­ley to han­dle its tv rights, its links to oth­er net­works and to be their mar­ket­ing per­son­al.

In re­sponse, Ri­ley said, among oth­er things, he will help ne­go­ti­ate the tele­vi­sion rights from the CON­CA­CAF for key match­es.

Ear­li­er Look Loy, in a pow­er-point pre­sen­ta­tion pro­duced an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart that will be the guide for T&T foot­ball when the group as­sume the reigns of pow­er. The chart shows the Board of Di­rec­tors for which all com­mit­tees and mem­bers will be re­port to and ac­count­able to.

Look Loy, the groups chief or­gan­is­er said to en­sure suc­cess in the sport, the new TTFA will have a func­tion­al tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee, di­rec­tor and tech­ni­cal de­part­ment: na­tion­al tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme (par­tic­u­lar­ly at the youth lev­el): ed­u­ca­tion for all types of per­son­nel: func­tion­al club-li­cens­ing and club pro­gramme: re­gion­al pro­gramme that will be head­ed by paid re­gion­al di­rec­tors and pro­grammes that will link with the tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme.

He said that there will be a train­ing cen­tre in To­ba­go, in­clu­sive of a dor­mi­to­ry and cafe­te­ria, gym­na­si­um, foot­ball fields, em­ploy­ment of a youth foot­ball man­ag­er among oth­ers, etc.

United TTFA Rise Up