Getting football back onside

AN ELECTION date has been set, but whether football is about to return to normal is uncertain.

Almost a decade since FIFA was dramatically raided, and notwithstanding the appointment of a local “normalisation” committee, the beautiful game is yet to fully recover and move on. That’s a crying shame.

Two recent developments bring into clear focus the state of the sport.

On Tuesday, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) announced the election of a new executive will take place on April 13.

However, the TTFA’s normalisation committee could remain in place until April 30, a full month after its term was due to expire. The lagniappe is for the election.

While this is not irregular, it is hardly satisfactory since it undermines the purpose of the committee, which is to bring about confidence in sporting administration.

That is even more so when we consider the committee’s mandate has now been extended, effectively, for a third time. It received official extensions in 2023 and 2021.

Meanwhile, as we await the poll, the legal troubles facing Jack Warner look poised to take centre stage.

US Supreme Court rulings have resurrected the dramatic events of 2015 in relation to FIFA and have seen Mr Warner suggest criminal matters in the US may well have to be vacated. The impact of the American court’s rulings might play a role in ongoing extradition proceedings due to come up again in early March.

Mr Warner, FIFA vice-president from 1996–2013, believes he has scored a legal victory, but US prosecutors may well deem the latest developments offside. They could appeal moves to throw out charges; or else legislators could move swiftly to plug gaps in the law as they have in the past.

The US Supreme Court rulings do not relate to guilt or innocence but general principles surrounding the reach of the law. At issue has been whether a private person has a duty to act honestly in relation to the state, and, separately, whether US law has jurisdiction over foreign officials involved in schemes that see funds pass through US financial institutions.

“All I did was to tell FIFA that it is time to change the paradigm of giving the World Cup to Europe and South America,” Mr Warner, who is also a former government minister, said in a recent interview. He links his legal woes to that stance. In doing so, however, he has deepened the perception that votes didn’t really matter when FIFA took the unprecedented step of awarding two world cups to Russia and Qatar successively.

But votes, freely given, should. And football should not be tied to all this commess. Perhaps the April 13 election will be an opportunity to get the game back onside.