When £16 million is £1.4 million

October 4th, 2007 | by: WC Bob | View Comments

You’d think that more than a year after the final whistle of the 2006 World Cup all of the players who participated in the tournament would have already spent their bonuses on productive things like fancy cars, shopping trips for their WAGS, and bling to attract new WAGs. That is likely the case for most the tournament’s participants, but not for the players from Trinidad and Tobago.

It comes as no surprise that FIFA crony and long-time World Cup Blog nemesis Jack Warner is involved in yet another scandal. It also comes as no surprise that he is likely to get away with it.

At heart of the matter, as detailed on World Soccer, is how much T&T’s players should receive for their efforts in Germany. Both the players and the suits agree that their should be a 50/50 split in revenues between the country’s football federation and the guys who played their hearts out in the World Cup.

Where they disagree is the numbers. The federation tried to offer each player £485 based on quoted revenue of £1.4 million. The players, who saw how many sponsorship opportunities the federation landed during the World Cup, balked at the number. It turns out they might be right.

The breakthrough for the players came last month when their London-based lawyer Michael Townley invoked freedom of information legislation to uncover official documents which confirmed that the Trinidad & Tobago government had offered to supplement sponsorship money obtained from the private sector with public cash. The documents revealed that the TTFF had received more than £16million in World Cup revenue – considerably more than the £1.43million that Warner and the TTFF say they received.

Not often is the case that I find myself sympathetic to footballers when it comes to issues of money, but in this instance you have a team made up of players who mostly earn modest incomes playing football in lower division across the world being hosed by a football federation headed by a man whose own wrong doings forced FIFA to set up an ethics committee to monitor itself.

It is hard not to root for the players and hard not to sympathize with the great fans of the Soca Warriors who deserve to see their country’s best players in action on the pitch, not in the courtroom.