September 23 – The ousted Trinidad and Tobago Football Association former board members who looked set to land the nation’s football community with a FIFA suspension, have backed down in the face of pressure from the wider football community and agreed to withdraw their High Court proceedings against FIFA.
A virtual meeting attended by 32 delegates (out of a possible 47 TTFA delegates) saw 21 votes in favour the case to be withdrawn. The meeting was informal with Justice Gobin having last week ruled that an EGM called by the FIFA imposed Normalisation Committee was illegal. That meeting was to discuss the same issue.
The deadline for withdrawal is 3pm AST with the ‘United TTFA’ former board having to provide FIFA with letters and court documentation proving the case has been withdrawn.
The meeting and vote is not a binding decision with a number of TTFA stakeholders still doubtful whether the William Wallace and Keith Look Loy-led court action will actually be withdraw.
What it would mean is that Trinidad and Tobago would keep its place in the Gold Cup 2021 draw where is a seeded nation in the qualification competition and so guarantees a trip to the US in the week before the group games for the finals proper kick off.
Withdrawing the court case means the end of a ruling by Judge Gobin that the complaint against the replacement of Wallace and his supporters by a FIFA Normalisation Committee could be held in the Trinidad and Tobago courts and not at the Court of Arbitration (CAS), as according to FIFA regulations.
For FIFA, who refused to appeal the initial Gobin judgement, were not moving on their statutes and repeatedly told Wallace, his board and their ringmaster Look-Loy that CAS was the court of first instance in this sporting dispute.
Before the meeting Look Loy (a former FIFA development officer in the bad old days of Jack Warner) told Wired868 that: “We have to quantify the support tonight for whatever position we should take forward, and there might be multiple positions. There are some who say fuck FIFA; regardless of the consequences we should continue.”
That has been Look Loy’s position throughout the whole debacle but the only people who would have been f****d would have ultimately been people working in football and those playing football in international competition. Wallace and his vice presidents – Clynt Taylor, Sam Phillip and Susan Joseph-Warrick – alongside Look Loy, now looked to have been f****d by a wider football community they thought they owned.
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