Deposed Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) president William Wallace has distanced from any link between himself and former T&T football top man Jack Warner.
Warner, who received a ban from football for life in 2015 and is still facing extradition to the United States on corruption charges, was a known supporter of Wallace ahead of his successful bid to oust former president David John-Williams three months ago.
Speculation has since been rife that an association between Wallace and the former disgraced FIFA officials was one of the reasons the world football governing body disbanded the newly elected TTFA administration. Wallace was quick to insist, however, that he did not have a close relationship with Warner and indicated as much to FIFA.
“That is a perceived relationship and one that I don’t have that when it came to the fore, I wrote FIFA, I wrote CONCACAF indicating to CONCACAF that there is no such relationship with Mr. Jack Warner and I guess that if at the end of the day that letter meant nothing then so be it,” Wallace said in an interview with the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show.
Wallace, who was relieved of his duties by FIFA last week, went on to point out that he received solid support from a lot of individuals who wanted change during the election and that he could not control who Warner chose to support.
“We had a host of people supporting us and actually, we won the election 26 votes to 20 votes so it meant that 26 of the delegates supported me along with many other Trinidadians who felt at that point in time that something was definitely wrong with the organisation at that point and they needed a change so as a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, even though Jack Warner expressed his opinion in terms of there should be change at the association then he has a right to do that, I really can’t stop him from doing that,” he added.
FIFA sent word of its decision to replace the TTFA executive with a normalisation committee two weeks ago in the face of what it described as extremely low overall financial management methods, combined with massive debt. A surprised Wallace, who pointed to positive meeting with FIFA only a few weeks prior has vowed to fight the decision.