The immediate future of the Trinidad and Tobago Premier Football League (T&TPFL) could be decided on Sunday when Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs (MSYA) Phillip Watts engages clubs in Tier 1 of the League, as well as football’s governing body, the T&T Football Association (TTFA), at a meeting at the VIP Lounge of the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain.
The meeting starts at 10 am and will have direct implications on how soon the 2026-2027 season will commence. Therefore, it is likely that the meeting will go well into the day, as the livelihoods of more than 400 players and staff members from the different clubs remain at stake, with there being no domestic competitive action for any of them since the 2025-2026 season having ended in March of this year.
Watts revealed on Wednesday that a major sticking point for the resumption of the country’s highest level of professional club football is that the TTFA remains non-compliant with the Sports Company of Trinidad and Tobago (SporTT), the key implementation and operational arm of the MSYA, with a bill of $12 million dating back to 2024 still unaccounted for in reconciliation.
However, this appears to be unknown to the TTFA, with two out of the three vice presidents yesterday assuring that all compliance requirements have been met.
General Secretary Kareem Paul has been the point of contact for the TTFA in the reconciliation process with the SporTT; however, phone calls from Guardian Media Sport for a comment have gone unanswered up to the time of publication of this article.
The reconciliation process between the two organisations has been an ongoing one, and at one stage it threatened to hamper T&T’s preparations and participation in the final set of Group A matches in League A of the Concacaf Nations League in September. Back then, the SporTT, through its Sports Development Performance Unit, found itself in a race against time attempting to sort through and verify TTFA financial documentation which was at the time understood to be pertaining to various areas, such as funds expended during the men’s and women’s World Cup campaigns and funding to the TTPFL, including salaries for clubs.
However, officials of the SporTT, speaking under conditions of anonymity, explained that in their desire to assist the TTFA to become compliant in time for fixtures against Haiti on September 24 and the Dominican Republic on September 27, that reconciliation $12M figure was temporarily deferred with the expectation that it would be rectified in time for the start of the new TTPFL season.
“When reconciliation was left out, the TTFA had reached 95 per cent compliance, but it was decided that since the TTPFL reconciliation is part of the process, the TTFA, like all other National Governing Bodies (NGBs), was required to meet it,” one SporTT official explained.
Watts sought to clear the air on claims that the Ministry has been holding back the league.
“The last discussions we had with SporTT, the TTFA is a body that falls under SporTT; the last thing SporTT would have reported to me is that the TTFA had close to $12 million in reconciliation outstanding that spans to 2024,” Watts explained.
He added, “In SporTT’s last note to cabinet, they would have recommended that no monies be paid out until the actual reconciliation is completed. So what they did was release half of the money. The note had money for the Men’s World Cup, it had money for the Women’s World Cup, and it also had a payment for the Professional League, and SporTT would have recommended, because of that reconciliation and the volume of money involved, that we do not pay the full amount.”
“They asked to release half, and that is in a cabinet note. So when it went to budgets, and budgets honoured the 50% payment, and the balance is there waiting for when the reconciliation is completed, and I think that is there since sometime in August. Still, SporTT is saying that they are missing documents; they are still working with TTFA to try to reconcile, so that is out of my hands now as a minister; it is out of SporTT’s hands, so it is up to TTFA now to try to do what they need to do to reconcile with SporTT. So it is not that we are withholding any money or anything like that; the TTFA is fully aware of what is going on.”
Meanwhile, Watts also addressed the suggestions that the responsibility for the management of the league be returned to the clubs. The idea was most recently championed by San Juan Jabloteh chairman Nirad Tewarie, as he chastised the TTFA for the delayed start of competition and called for clubs to handle their own affairs.
Tewarie’s musings earned him a meeting with minister Watts two days later, for a discussion on football matters.
According to the minister, “They pitched out some ideas as to how maybe the ministry could assist with getting the money through to the clubs instead of passing it through TTFA. We discussed all that, but as a responsible minister, I would not meet with a club to have those kinds of discussions without the governing body of football involved in that. So this is why we agreed to meet on Sunday in the presence of the TTFA, because I’m committed to having the professional league start; you know, as a minister and as a ministry, we are committed.”
