FIFA Vice President Jack Warner has written a forthright letter, on FIFA-headed paper, to Sunderland manager Roy Keane following the withdrawal of the English club’s striker, Dwight Yorke, from World Cup qualifying action for Trinidad & Tobago against the USA.
Warner, the Concacaf president who also acts as “special adviser” to the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation, accused Keane in the letter of showing “insensitivity and disrespect” over the issue. Yet the veteran Yorke, 36, told the Echo last week that he was “totally in control” of his involvement with T&T, and would only play for his country when it did not impinge on his job at Sunderland.
Sunderland is “furious” that Warner’s letter has been leaked, according to the Echo, “but they decided… not to get involved in a public slanging match over the details.” Meanwhile, the webzine eleven-a-side.com printed the salty correspondence in full: “Your callous disrespect for the rights of ‘small’ countries to have their players represent them as enshrined in FIFA regulations reveals a mean streak in your character and one which will not endear you or Sunderland to football aficionados of such countries,” Warner wrote. “It is a dangerous path to tread.
“Yet, the Trinidad and Tobago Federation will, in this instance, neither insist on, nor pursue its right to have you and Sunderland make Mr. Yorke available to represent his country, but such refusal or reluctance on its part ought not to be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the Federation. Please be guided accordingly.”