Following the avalanche of blame that has tumbled on embattled TTFA president William Wallace, in light of FIFA’s ruling to suspend Trinidad and Tobago from world football indefinitely, former national footballer, David Nakhid, insists there are multiple ‘villains’ involved in the case.
Nakhid was quick to point out that he has no sympathy for Wallace because the deposed official “did several things subsequent to his appointment without consulting the board.”
“A situation like this calls for compromise, it calls for mediation, it calls for some level of consultation between parties and we never had that,” Nakhid said in an interview with the SportsMax Zone.
“What we had was a lot of hotspot meetings and disjointed efforts by parties here and parties there,” he added. In the mind of the former Soca Warriors captain, however, Wallace was far from the only one deserving of criticism.
As such, he also turned his attention to the world governing body FIFA, for whom he had some particularly strong words. He accused the global football organisation of being ‘hypocrites’ and seeing the Caribbean region as just part of a voting bloc and not much else.
“FIFA has always been an organisation that has the Caribbean and by extension Latin America as just a voting bloc. Basically, we are still indentured labourers to them," he said.
The former Caribbean Footballer of the Year was also critical of leaders of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), past and present, who he accused of leaving no legacy for the Caribbean and ensuring that the region did not have a genuine voice on the world stage.
Nakhid launched a longshot bid for the FIFA presidency in 2015 but was disqualified from the race after receiving a double nomination. At the time, his proposed candidacy never received wide support across the Caribbean, garnering a total of five votes.
On Thursday, FIFA suspended the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) for its failure to withdraw a case that is currently before the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, within the prescribed timeframe that came after a previous extension. The ruling will see the twin-island republic immediately deprived of all its rights as a member of FIFA, which comes with other consequences.