Wallace mum on TTFA finances before key meeting

Wal­lace, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion had promised spon­sor­ship in abun­dance, in­clud­ing a lu­cra­tive deal with Unit­ed States-based sports­wear gi­ant Nike, if they were to as­sume gov­er­nance of T&T foot­ball, on Mon­day told Guardian Me­dia Sports he could not say any­thing about the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion un­til their first meet­ing of the board on De­cem­ber 14.

Wal­lace’s com­ment came even as pres­i­dent of the Vet­er­an Foot­ball Foun­da­tion Sel­by Browne is­sued a re­lease to the me­dia on Mon­day, ques­tion­ing why the Wal­lace-led TTFA had to scale down the re­cent­ly launched League of Cham­pi­ons due to lack of fund­ing and de­scribed it as lu­di­crous.

Browne said fund­ing has to be the least of the prob­lems of the new TTFA.

Ac­cord­ing to Browne, “This ad­min­is­tra­tion is now re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing sup­port fund­ing for not just the TT Pro League and oth­er TTFA Leagues, but all na­tion­al teams and tech­ni­cal pro­grammes which are all in­clud­ed in the more than $30 mil­lion deficit bud­get ap­proved by del­e­gates at the TTFA AGM held on No­vem­ber 24th. More­over, this ad­min­is­tra­tion is now re­spon­si­ble for the an­swers to make pay­ment of the now more than $48 mil­lion debt of the TTFA in ad­di­tion to the $15 mil­lion state­ment of claim by Mr Jack Warn­er.”

He added, “The new TTFA will need to im­me­di­ate­ly bring the US$30 mil­lion spon­sor­ship funds to in­clude re­ceiv­ing the promised Nike spon­sor­ship mil­lions to avoid the TTFA from be­ing de­clared bank­rupt or avoid­ing in­sol­ven­cy. It is my hum­ble view that any right-think­ing TTFA del­e­gate at­tend­ing the AGM would have con­sid­ered the ques­tion of ad­dress­ing the sol­ven­cy of the Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty be­fore cast­ing their vote.”

Browne con­clud­ed by say­ing he hopes the an­swers to this re­al con­cern will be im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed by the new TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore those ques­tions are asked by the CON­CA­CAF, FI­FA and the Gov­ern­ment.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Born­we’s claim yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Wal­lace said he was not at lib­er­ty to dis­close the fi­nances of the TTFA as yet, say­ing this would not be pos­si­ble at least un­til the first of­fi­cial board meet­ing is held on Sat­ur­day from 1 pm.

“I would not com­ment on any re­lease that Mr Browne sent out at this point in time. I have a board meet­ing next Sat­ur­day and at that meet­ing, we will ap­prise the board on it,” Wal­lace said.

Wal­lace said they are still get­ting a clear­er pic­ture on the TTFA’s fi­nances and will soon be seal­ing some of the promised spon­sor­ship con­tracts as their par­ties have been work­ing on it .