“Come on and support the Normalisation Committee, it happened to us also and now we are better off.”
This has been the advice of Clinton Urling, former chairman of the 2014 FIFA Normalisation Committee appointed in Guyana, to the ousted T&T Football Association (TTFA) executive being led by William Wallace.
Urling sought to clear the air on whether it was the world governing body for the sport of football, FIFA, which puts out the funding in the case of a normalisation committee scenario to clear the debt of the TTFA, or if it was incumbent of the normalisation committee to come up with innovative ideas, as well as source funding.
He told Guardian Media Sports on Friday that the chairman of the FIFA appointed normalisation committee Robert Hadad will have 100 per cent power, discretion and responsibility to come up with initiatives and plans to solve the issues of the embattled football administration and FIFA will check it first, before providing the funds.
Officials of the football association recently raised concerns about the little to no progress the committee has had to date under Hadad, a concern that comes almost two months after FIFA, on March 17, agreed to implement the normalisation committee in T&T, based on the burdening debt that was said to be some $50 million and no means or measures to put the association back on a stable footing.
Hadad, who was appointed alongside his deputy Judy Daniel, an Attorney and environmentalist, and Nigel Romano, who is a retired banker, has since encountered steady resistance from Wallace and his team of vice presidents Clynt Taylor, Joseph Sam Phillips and Susan Joseph-Warrick, for use of the TTFA letterhead and to secure use of the TTFA’s bank accounts, as well as emerging concerns from new contractors claiming monies from work done on the controversial “Home of Football” in Balmain, Couva.
Urling said while he does not want to impose, he believes that Wallace and his team should join forces with Hadad and his team if they really love the sport of football and the country, saying in Guyana they had to do the same thing.
“In fact, the situation in Guyana was worse than what we see in T&T. The normalisation committee brings a sort of influence for the business and other communities and it is a tremendous help. Back home, it helped us with securing sponsors and land etc. We just had to work with the normalisation committee and instead of the two years given, we were able to turn the sport around in a year.”
Urling then turned to Wallace and company, saying it is useless trying to fight FIFA through the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland, as the sport’s governing body acted within its legal right to appoint a committee.
“There is no other document clearer than the FIFA Statutes, so I can’t understand why a legal person would attempt to convince the TTFA members that they have a fighting chance. The fact is that they cannot win the FIFA. Okay, let’s say that the TTFA wins the FIFA at the CAS, then the FIFA would simply invoke its clause that refers to no political interference and still ban the TTFA. Who is to say they would not do it, they have done it before, so who suffers then, isn’t it the country and the sport.”
“I sympathise with Wallace and his team, I know how they feel, but emotions have no place in law. In fact, I could recall back in 2015, there were talks to appoint a normalisation committee in T&T under the then president Raymond Tim Kee, so it really does not make a difference if it is appointed now.”
Urling, a businessman by profession said his main concern is if the sport will be properly managed after the exit of the normalisation committee in two years, saying the TTFA must determine where the debt came from in the first place so that the managers of the sport don’t fall back into the same problems they are facing now. (Reprinted from Trinidad Guardian)
