President of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Randy Harris says while the decision by FIFA to take over the administration of football in Trinidad and Tobago is unfortunate, an appeal against the move is likely to be unsuccessful.
While the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) and others in the local football community have described as a coup, the plan by the world governing body for the sport to replace the board with a normalisation committee, Harris said FIFA was acting within the rules that all member associations (MAs) have agreed to play by.
TTFA president William Wallace announced Wednesday that the association has mounted a challenge to FIFA’s decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
He questioned why such drastic action was taken, considering no such move was made against the David John-Williams-led administration from which his executive inherited a TT$50 million (US$7.4 million) debt when it took over last November.
“This is a very unfortunate situation because we have a duly elected body of members to run the T&TFA,” Harris told Andre Errol Baptiste on I955 FM’s ISports radio show on Thursday. “The Trinidad and Tobago FA has found itself in a sad situation which all of us in the Caribbean could be in tomorrow.”
However, he said, an appeal would be an expensive option that had little chance of success.
“In this particular situation – in my view, based on my experience – it would be very, very difficult to win a case such as this because FIFA has a right to decide when they will introduce normalisation. If you read the statutes, basically we all agree to play under the statues of FIFA,” Harris contended.
FIFA said Wednesday that it was going the normalisation route because an assessment it carried out in conjunction with continental governing body, CONCACAF, found extremely low overall financial management methods, combined with a massive debt that resulted in the TTFA facing “a very real risk of insolvency and illiquidity”.
Harris noted that given the TTFA’s financial situation, it would be difficult for it to adequately administer football in the twin-island republic.
Against that background, he reiterated the need for the Caribbean to develop the sport so associations could all become self-sufficient and not have to depend on FIFA money.
“You can’t have it both ways…. The funds that FIFA is allotting to us is not a right, it is a privilege. FIFFA can get a president next week that decides that that is not the position that FIFA will take in the future. What will we do in the Caribbean?” he questioned.
“We need to get together and we need to work together to ensure that we develop football properly. Yes, we are individual MAs, but when it comes to education in the game, development in the game, searching for sponsorship, we need to get together and bring our numbers together.”
FIFA’s normalisation committee will have up to two years to carry out its work, including creating a debt repayment plan which the TTFA can implement, reviewing the local governing body’s statutes and ensuring their adherence to FIFA regulations, and overseeing new elections.
Until the committee is operational, FIFA has selected accountant Tyril Patrick, who is linked to the previous TTFA regime, to be in charge.
That move have also been questioned by Wallace who said expressed concern that Patrick had been “part of an administration that was part of a regime that led to the collapse of the association”.
In an interview on CNC3 TV online, former Trinidad and Tobago international goalkeeper and ESPN television analyst Neil Shaka Hislop said FIFA’s actions were “disingenuous and self-serving”.
“You do not install the accountant that oversaw the finances of the previous administration — that were there for the last four years while that debt mushroomed — as the interim in running our financial affairs,” Hislop said.
“Why you wait until some 10 years to install a normalisation committee into our football is beyond me. And all signs point to only one thing — that both the FIFA hierarchy and the CONCACAF leadership were in favour of the David John-Williams administration. Now, you have to question why that is, you can speculate, but I have my feeling about it, but you don’t overturn a legal, democratic election because you are disappointed that your man on the inside lost.”
ABOVE SOURCE: T&T Guardian
‘They ent lifting a finger!’ TTFA rules out Caribbean support as Ramdhan lets loose.
By Lasana Liburd (Wired868).
If the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) hoped for regional support as they try to stave off Fifa intervention in the form of a normalisation committee, such dreams have apparently dissipated.
“We have private support [from the Caribbean member associations],” one official told Wired868 today. “They agree that we are being victimised but everyone is avoiding open support for our position.”
TTFA general secretary Ramesh Ramdhan said as much in more colourful terms, during a chat with i95.5FM tonight.
“They ent lifting a finger,” said Ramdhan, “because massa day ent done yet.”
Trinidad and Tobago has been accustomed to larger than life football leaders who dominated the football body. For better or worse, nobody could accuse estranged TTFA president William Wallace of following that pattern.
The most vocal members of the current administration have been technical committee chairman Keith Look Loy and, now, spunky general secretary, Ramdhan.
A former World Cup referee, Ramdhan treated a financial enquiry by Fifa director Veron Mosengo-Omba as though he were a cheeky schoolboy questioning a free kick. And he did not hold back much tonight, as he lashed out at ‘long-winded, obstructionist board members’, the ‘suspicious’ movements of Fifa officials—not least, Mosengo-Omba—and his cowardly neighbours in the Caribbean Football Union (CFU).
“Colleagues, if fair play and justice have to remain the foundation upon which we all stand, then we cannot allow autocratic power which bears all the characteristics of authoritarianism to remain unchallenged,” said Ramdhan, in a letter to CFU officials on Thursday. “We are prepared to take the lead, but we need you to fight this fight with us. This situation has presented an opportunity for the CFU Nations to regain the respect that somehow was unfortunately squandered to our detriment.
“We are confined to being recipients of handouts and ignoring the significant contribution we can make in global football. Let’s regain our self-respect by lending your collective voices to this effort.”
Ramdhan was being honest and certainly did not waste any time on flattery.
By then, CFU president Randy Harris had already made it clear that he would be of no assistance to Trinidad and Tobago.
“It is a decision that Fifa can make because we are playing under their statutes and they are the only people who will decide when there is normalisation,” Harris told i95.5FM, earlier in the week. “[…] The Trinidad and Tobago FA has found itself in a sad situation, which all of us in the Caribbean can be in tomorrow.
“[…] If in Fifa’s opinion the member association has severe enough problems that it doesn’t look as if things would be sorted out in the short term, they have the authority to come in. And every Caribbean country knows that.”
Article 8.2, which Fifa invoked, states: ‘Executive bodies of member associations may under exceptional circumstances be removed from office by the Council in consultation with the relevant confederation and replaced by a normalisation committee for a specific period of time’.
Concacaf has 41 member associations and 31 of them are in the CFU. Yet, Harris, who is also a Concacaf vice-president, said he was not even notified before Fifa moved in on Trinidad and Tobago—a decision that was supposedly based on a report co-authored by Concacaf, while the confederation’s president, Victor Montagliani, sits on the Bureau of the Fifa Council that made the call.
“They don’t have to notify the Caribbean Football Union,” said the Barbadian administrator, who hired Camara David as CFU general secretary after he resigned from the TTFA in the wake of David John-Williams’ electoral defeat. “[…] The Union has no power, not even as a collective. The situation is we are Fifa members and while some may not agree with the action taken at the time it has been taken, I don’t see that there is anything we can do as a Union.”
Harris reacted angrily when the radio host used a colonial analogy to suggest the relationship between Fifa’s Zurich headquarters and the Caribbean.
“The same white man [people say is wielding the big stick] is the same person who is funding football in Trinidad and the Caribbean,” said Harris. “You can’t have it both ways. We have to develop our football in such a way that we become self-sufficient.
“The funds that Fifa is allowing to us is not a right, it is a privilege. Fifa can get a president next week who can [change that].”
Did Harris have any advice for Wallace during these dark days?
“I think it is a bit late to give advice,” said Harris, who hinted that an appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) was probably an expensive waste of time. “[…] In my view, based on my experience, it will be very very difficult to win a case such as this because Fifa has a right to decide when they will introduce normalisation.
“If you read the statutes, basically we all agree to play under the statutes of Fifa.”
Was it unfair?
“Unfair is relative,” answered Harris.
At one point, the CFU president accused the i95.5FM host of trying to put words in his mouth. Ramdhan had not forgotten the exchange.
“You should have put something else in his mouth,” said the TTFA general secretary.
Ramdhan said he kept files related to the controversial Home of Football project in a safe location.
“I’m not stupid,” he said.
If Wallace and his crew are crowbarred out of office, they clearly will not go quietly.
CFU member: Dear TTFA, you broke the unwritten rule against ‘witch hunts’
Wired868.
“Based on my experience as a president, nine years now, the parent bodies don’t like those witch hunts because they are considered counter-productive to football development.
“[…] There’s an unwritten script that was set up by the parent bodies and it seems your member association didn’t follow that script…”
The following is a letter written by the football president of a member association within the Caribbean Football Union (CFU)—in response to a request for support by Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) general secretary Ramesh Ramdhan:
Dear general secretary Ramdhan,
Your email and its contents are well received and understood. I was waiting for 24 hours to pass to see if the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) president, executive committee or a member association (MA) would [have] responded to your email. Maybe they did privately.
The CFU has changed over the years. Everything happens now in a vacuum and only a privileged few gets to know what’s happening. Sorry to tell you but every MA is on its own if it has an issue or problem. You have to report directly to Fifa or Concacaf appointed staff to bring your issue to light, then it will be resolved [based] on their findings.
The CFU is non-existent when it comes to assisting in solving conflicts. There [have] been great strides made on the administrative side: [with] the hosting of youth and girls tournaments and adopting new statutes to be in-line with Fifa and Concacaf. But it’s not a political force, as it was in the past.
The assistance and solidarity you are seeking would not be openly given by the majority of the countries, based on what has been put in place by the parent bodies and what line the CFU president and his executive committee is currently holding.
Football administration is a tedious task and there is a fine line between development work and political [witch] hunts. Almost all presidents and new administrations in football go through a scenario of [having to decide] if the will devote time, money and resources on the past administrations’ dealings, or concentrate on the present and future.
Based on my experience as a president, nine years now, the parent bodies don’t like those witch hunts because they are considered counter-productive to football development.
After reviewing the documentation you presented, it seems that witch hunt was a part of your agenda. There’s an unwritten script that was set up by the parent bodies and it seems your MA didn’t follow that script.
I’m not picking sides but what I saw in the media, it seems there was a lot of miscommunication between the parent bodies and your MA. The three entities saw the situation differently.
Looking at it from far, it seems an injustice was done to your MA by removing a duly elected executive committee just under four months from being in office. I just wished cooler heads could [have] prevailed before it had reached this far.
This kind of drastic action could [have] happened to any MA if there is miscommunication or misperception of the situation on the ground in a particular country.
I wish you well in your fight and I hope the other Caribbean countries support you in your quest for information and reasoning as [you take] your case forward.
Regards,
Editor’s Note: Wired868 agreed to publish this letter from a CFU president anonymously.