BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Former head coach Russell Latapy is demanding the approximately US$1 million owed to him by the embattled Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA).
Latapy, who is now coaching the Barbados national team, made it clear that he expects to be paid what is due to him, even as the TTFA faces financial woes to the tune of TT$50 million (US$7.4 million) and fights the appointment by football’s world governing body FIFA of a normalisation committee to run the local body’s affairs.
The 51-year-old former T&T star player coached the national team between 2009 and 2011, and was an assistant coach in 2009 and then in 2017.
He said the TTFA has been indebted to him for more than a decade.
“I am still being owed that money since 2009. It is not rocket science. The football association, based on reports from the newspapers, I would like to think that some of the money they owe me is also included in the TT$50 million,” he told the Nation newspaper here.
“It is money that I worked for and, like anything else, if I work for that money I am not asking any favours…. So I want the money I worked for. I am no different from anybody.”
Last month, four months after the new TTFA Board was elected, FIFA removed the executive because of financial mismanagement, and appointed a normalization committee to take charge of operations. It said it had found “extremely low overall financial management methods, combined with a massive debt” which had left the association “facing a very real risk of insolvency and illiquidity”.
The committee, which will have up to two years to carry out its work, has to create a debt repayment plan for the TTFA, review the local governing body’s statutes and ensure their adherence to FIFA regulations, and oversee new elections.
The TTFA is challenging FIFA’s takeover at the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Switzerland. But Latapy said he supported FIFA’s move if it was going to “straighten up football and give the young people in Trinidad the opportunity to make something of themselves and to dream big”.
“If FIFA is going to come in on the right pathway for us, then I welcome that,” he said.
