Lessons from football impasse
Express Editorial
Tuesday, September 25th 2007
IT's good news that the acrimonious matter involving the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) and the players on the national team has reached an amicable pass. The matter in which the players have been claiming monies they insist are owed to them by the TTFF from the 2006 World Cup campaign in Germany is now headed to a tribunal in London.
And after months of stout denials that some of those players were on a blacklist for raising their complaints in public, the TTFF has agreed to abandon just such a list.
A number of those players who have been expressing their willingness to continue playing for the team and were being denied selection, will now be considered once again for selection.
The sport's local governing body must now bury the hatchet it has been wielding against the players for pursuing what they conceive to be their just cause. And the players must now also put their trust in the deliberations of the arbitral panel in London, in which their own legal representative reposes supreme confidence.
Both sides in the matter appeared to have agreed to this process of settling this grievance which had the effect of, among other things, rendering Trinidad and Tobago less than full strength on the field of play.
So soon after the glorious campaign of the national team in Germany 2006, when the country made history both on and off the field, this spectacle of players versus officials over money was, in a word, ugly.
Whatever the outcome of the deliberations of the panel in London in this affair, two things are apparent going in. Both sides in the debacle have chosen to accept and abide by that decision. Also, the proceedings all agree, will be completed in a much speedier fashion than if the matter had gone to court, either in London or in Port of Spain.
It is a sign of the maturity of the principals and their advisers on both sides that they have moved to have the matter settled in this manner.
While a few of the players from the historic Soca Warriors outfit who missed vital action during this period of dispute have now retired, several of them will look forward now to returning to action in representing their country.
The issue on the whole speaks to the growing realisation of how competitive sport, and the representation of one's country in it have now become part and parcel of international business.
It is just one of the many lessons which sporting officials, equally as players and their fans, must appreciate about the times in which we live, as exemplified by the ramifications of how this issue has played itself out thus far.