Court tells Trinidad football federation to pay 2006 World Cup squad
By Matt Scott (guardian.co.uk)
The supreme court in Port of Spain has ordered the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation to pay TT$1m to its 2006 World Cup squad.
The ruling, released late on Monday, is the beginning of the end of a long legal process that has seen Jack Warner, the Fifa vice-president and special adviser to the TTFF, accused of repeatedly failing to deliver on promises to his own national team.
The judgment also calls for formal accounts relating to the period leading up to and including the 2006 World Cup to be prepared by the TTFF, accompanied by a verifying affidavit by its president, Oliver Camps.
That will be a crucial element in the players' struggle to receive the 50% of all income the TTFF promised them that was received from commercial sponsorships and from Fifa in relation to their World Cup appearance four years ago.
According to a judgment of an arbitration hearing seen by the Guardian, that is the sum Warner promised the players would be paid, with the squad believing it is due up to £6m in unpaid fees.
Shaka Hislop, Trinidad's goalkeeper for two of the games at the 2006 World Cup, told the Guardian this week: "Warner made promises. We were told we would get 50% of all the commercial money. When we were eventually told what that would be it was TT$5,000 (£492.86) a man. Which we knew it could not be. There were contracts made that we signed with Adidas and a number of other companies around Trinidad and Tobago.
"The TTFA was happy to brag about the size of those contracts. We made our feelings known and questioned Jack Warner's accounting skills.
"The TTFA is about Warner and almost no one else. I felt very let down. It was our proudest moment as a football nation and once the offer was made of TT$5,000 a man we felt desperately let down. It was a slap in the face of everything we had done and how we had made the country feel."
Warner denies the matter has anything to do with him.
