OUSTED president of the TT Football Association (TTFA) William Wallace, said his team is not rushing into a decision on what their next move would be after a normalisation committee was selected to run the TTFA.
On Friday, local businessman Robert Hadad was chosen as the chairperson of the normalisation committee. He will be joined by deputy chairperson Judy Daniel and member Nigel Romano. According to a media release the FIFA administration, in consultation with CONCACAF, will appoint two more members in the coming days.
FIFA said the mandate of the normalisation committee will include establishing a debt repayment plan that is implementable by the TTFA.
The normalisation committee’s job will end when the assigned tasks are complete, but it would not last more than 24 months.
On March 17, FIFA made the decision to disband the TTFA executive led by president Wallace.
On Saturday, Wallace said his team is uncertain what the next move will be after the three-member normalisation committee was chosen.
“We are still contemplating our next move. We are certain that whatever we do we do not want to affect football in TT negatively, so that is a consideration that we are definitely putting in the mix. Therefore, based on that we have to be careful as to how we proceed, so we are not running into anything with any kind of haste. We are taking our time to deliberate on this before we make our next move.”
FIFA and CONCACAF found that TTFA was not in a position to run football effectively in a fact-finding mission and decided to break up the TTFA hierarchy and form a normalisation committee to take over. Among the reasons FIFA gave to break up the TTFA was the massive debt facing local football, which is said to be $50 million.
Wallace was only voted into office in November, 2019 and inherited the debt.
Days after Wallace and his executive were removed, it was revealed that former finance manager of the TTFA, Tyril Patrick, was appointed to lead the normalisation committee, but he declined the position. Patrick was an employee of the TTFA administration under former president David John-Williams, who led the local football body for four years until November, 2019.
Before Patrick turned down the position, Dr Emir Crowne and Matthew Gayle, the sports lawyers representing Wallace and his former executive, sent Patrick a pre-action protocol letter on March 20.
The lawyers warned Patrick that if he attempted to interfere with the operations of the TTFA and the operations of the executive then they would seek assistance from the courts to prevent him and other people from doing that.
Prior to the three members being appointed to the normalisation committee, Gayle said they intended to fight FIFA for breaking up the TTFA. They are stating that Wallace and his team were elected and an external body has no right to take control of a local body.