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“[…] I imagine the people who support Fifa’s intervention, in the face of a High Court ruling, would give this advice to their children: ‘When you’re accepting payment from someone, abuse is justified’…”
The following Letter to the Editor on Fifa’s takeover of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) was submitted by Trinidad and Tobago Men’s National Under-15 Team and Presentation College (San Fernando) goalkeeper coach, Jefferson George:
(Copyright Wired868)
So in the era of #BlackLivesMatter and the outcry for social justice, must we accept Fifa pushing a knife down our throats once they are also putting a few sweets into our pockets?
I imagine the people who support Fifa’s intervention, in the face of a High Court ruling, would give this advice to their children: ‘When you’re accepting payment from someone, abuse is justified’.
I encourage everyone interested in the Trinidad and Tobago football fraternity to read Judge Carol Gobin’s ruling and examine her judgement against Fifa. Regardless of our personal feelings about the individuals involved, the world’s governing body obviously does not apply its ‘fair play’ mantra to its own operations.
We love invoking Rosa Parks and her stance—or more literally sit-in—against segregation without recognising the personal consequences she endured in doing so. Freedom and liberty always comes with a high price because those who benefit from maintaining the status quo will fight to keep it in place.
(Copyright AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
So it is evident, if the efforts against injustice is weaker than the unjust systems themselves, then those systems will all remain in place—doling out crumbs to give the appearance of benevolence, while becoming fat off of the work of its participants.
Are you willing to pay the price for justice, T&T?
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I have been following this situation from day one and I agree with Jefferson the problem is that I am of the view that infantino is trying to protect himself from this small nation where he was involved in the mismanagement of the funds used for the home of football. We have to believe that if this small nation could challenge the. Big masa and win how would the other big nation’s who also have problems with FIFA but just left them alone would now do
Well said Mr George… In the words of Marcus Garvey, popularised by Bob Marley we must: ” Emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, …none but ourselves can free our mind..”
You ask the final question rhetorically but reflection says that it is a real question the answer to which, I fear, is not unlikely to differ from the answer to the first question.
And there are many, I also fear, who would accuse you of making false equivalences.
This is a hard country for thinking adults to live in, bro, as William Wallace has discovered to his cost.
And it must be even harder for children looking for exemplars; they are fated to have the Diogenes experience.
If indeed the actions by FIFA is considered abuse, then the TTFA should not accept any further “sweets” from that source and go it alone. Simple but yet not that simple. Why would FIFA waste time and resources to abuse Trinidad which is of the least significance in the grand scheme of world football?
The Trinidad football association has been affiliated to FIFA since 1944 and its financial record is dismal over the many years to say the least. Should FIFA continue to throw monies into a ‘dark hole’ without accountability? One wonders what Jefferson George would do if he was funding the TTFA? Would he have continued to do so in the interest of satisfying the “the outcry for social justice”?
There must be something I am missing! Hopefully someone out there can help me to better understand this ongoing imbroglio.
“Hopefully someone out there can help me to better understand this ongoing imbroglio.”
I don’t know, you know. There are none so blind as those who will not see…