Min­is­ter ready to meet with TTFA

"In terms of fund­ing for foot­ball, like any oth­er NGB, qual­i­fi­ca­tion for re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events or games at the high­est lev­el, we sup­port. Foot­ball has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to run its busi­ness prop­er­ly. I know that much of the debt and much of the sit­u­a­tion would have been in­her­it­ed from, not just the last ad­min­is­tra­tion but the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. We are talk­ing about years and years of trou­ble in foot­ball. Foot­ball has to or­gan­ise it­self and es­pe­cial­ly reach out to FI­FA al­so in the man­age­ment of its busi­ness."

How­ev­er, Cud­joe ex­pressed her dis­plea­sure over the TTFA clos­ing of the "Home of Foot­ball" in Bal­main, Cou­va, fol­low­ing its in­au­gu­ra­tion in De­cem­ber.

"An­oth­er sit­u­a­tion that foot­ball has on its hands right now is the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ that was cre­at­ed to be an in­come gen­er­a­tor," she said.

"Is the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive of foot­ball look­ing at open­ing the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ so that all the sport­ing en­ti­ties that would have made ap­pli­ca­tions and reser­va­tions and arrange­ments to utilise the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ and put mon­ey in the hands of TTFA? What is the TTFA do­ing as it re­lates to that?

"I think these are the kind of ques­tions that they need to look in­to. I think it is quite un­for­tu­nate that here we have made this ma­jor in­vest­ment as Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide the land, FI­FA would have made the in­vest­ment to build the fa­cil­i­ty and now there seems to be some type of dis­crep­an­cy as it re­lates to open­ing and util­is­ing the fa­cil­i­ty and bring­ing in some in­come in or­der to foot their bills as a foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion."

She added, "As I say all of the time, all these as­so­ci­a­tions and NG­Bs are in­de­pen­dent, they are au­tonomous, Gov­ern­ment can on­ly fa­cil­i­tate to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of our ath­letes, to­wards our sport­ing dis­ci­plines but they do have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to run their busi­ness pro­fes­sion­al­ly and to do so well and not just call on Gov­ern­ment when fund­ing is need­ed or when they find them­selves in a bind.

"But let us not jump the gun, let us hear what they bring. But of course, I will ask what is hap­pen­ing with the open­ing and util­is­ing of the ‘Home of Foot­ball.”