The Jack Warner story

[Danny Jarman]

Court ruling exposes broken promises made by Jack Warner

Jack Warner, David Cameron's would-be lunch guest, faces the embarrassment of a high-court judgment today over his broken promises to Trinidad and Tobago's 2006 World Cup squad.


Cameron has been attempting to woo Warner, who as Concacaf president controls three votes in the World Cup 2018 bid process, and had invited him for lunch at No10. Cameron's office said last week that it had been postponed due to "scheduling difficulties" but that the two hoped to have lunch when they meet in Zurich.


That will enable Warner, who has been a vociferous critic of tonight's scheduled Panorama programme on Fifa, to concentrate on the ruling from a judge in Port of Spain over how the Trinidad & Tobago Football Association should redress the string of broken promises he made to the 2006 players over their World Cup bonuses which have still not been received. And as Cameron seeks Warner's pledge, before Thursday's vote in Zurich, to support England 2018, Shaka Hislop, who was the players' lead negotiator in 2006, believes Warner has not kept his word. England might take note.


"Warner made promises," said Hislop. "We were told we would get 50% of all the commercial money. When we were eventually told what that would be it was TT$5,000 [£492.86] a man – which we knew it could not be. There were contracts made that we signed with Adidas and a number of other companies around Trinidad and Tobago.


"The TTFA was happy to brag about the size of those contracts. We made our feelings known and questioned Jack Warner's accounting skills. The TTFA is about Warner and almost no one else. I felt very let down. It was our proudest moment as a football nation and once the offer was made of TT$5,000 a man we felt desperately let down. It was a slap in the face of everything we had done and how we had made the country feel."


Pitched into England's 2006 World Cup group, the Soca Warriors were making their first appearance at the tournament finals, drawing with Sweden, losing narrowly to England before bowing out against Paraguay.
Warner, who is described as the "special adviser" to the TTFA and is not on its board, denies the matter has anything to do with him. "I have nothing to say about that, it is nothing to do with me. I never appeared in court, I never gave a speech about it; it was for the federation. I have nothing to do with that. It doesn't bother me even remotely," he said.


A previous high-court judgment found the Fifa vice-president was "at all material times the authority of the TTFA" in the negotiations with players over their World Cup bonuses. The players believe they should have been due closer to £260,000 each and the high court will rule on Friday whether to force the TTFA to prepare audited accounts of the sums it received in relation to the 2006 World Cup. The players have also pressed for a US$6m (£1.87m) interim payment from the TTFA.


"Anyone who has followed Trinidadian football knows that transparency is a huge issue," said Hislop. "No one knows what comes in and what goes out. There are huge cheques from the government and no one knows what comes in and where it goes."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/...-world-cup