MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Brent Latham is among the Miami-Dade County residents who stand tall to cheer for Leo Messi. It was an impossibility to have one of the greatest players of all time join in David Beckham’s dream, but Messi surprised the world when he chose U.S. Major League Soccer over Europe or the Middle East.
Latham, the mayor of North Bay Village until 2024, and other fans look at the Inter Miami CF story as an inspiration of perseverance. A powerful foreign company is attacking Latham and the village while challenging his vision for a soccer project in court.
“It’s just another hurdle in the way and I’m confident that we’ll get over it,” Latham said about a lawsuit recently filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida by a local attorney who represents a subsidiary of World Eleven, a FIFA-licensed company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For years, Latham has worked toward materializing his vision of a private-public partnership at a Miami-Dade County Public Schools property that is part of Treasure Island Elementary School, which serves over 400 students at 7540 E. Treasure Drive.
A set of bridges connect the two-island village of over 8,000 on Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach and the city of Miami. Latham, who is serving his second term as mayor, wants children in the area as young as 6 years old to have access to a prestigious soccer program.
“It is a frivolous lawsuit designed to delay the process,” Latham said.
In the 12-page lawsuit, World Eleven blames Latham’s pursuit for The Argentine Football Association’s decision to cancel a franchise contract in April, which resulted in an ongoing contract dispute in Argentina’s judicial system, according to the lawsuit.
Attorneys representing World Eleven described Latham as “a former FIFA executive with high ambitions in the soccer world” who engaged in “fraud and deception” through “behind-the-scenes dealings” to cut World Eleven out of the contract to franchise and sub-franchise AFA-FTI academies for kids worldwide.
The pandemic halted the project, but World Eleven, claiming to have exclusivity, promoted the AFA-FTI brand internationally; opened the first one on Aug. 30, 2020, in the United Arab Emirates; and made a “significant investment” in plans to open one in Pembroke Pines, according to the lawsuit.
Before Latham was mayor, he took his passion for soccer to work with The Fédération Internationale de Football Association or FIFA; The Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football or CONCACAF; and ESPN.
In the lawsuit, Sebastian A. Garcia, the Surfside attorney who represents World Eleven, questioned Latham’s village-approved AFA all-expenses paid trip to London to “hammer out the details” of an agreement and added that “no gift disclosure statement has been filed.”
Garcia also claimed the village’s agreements with AFA in 2021 — which have yet to be approved by Miami-Dade County school board members as required by an agreement with the village in 2020 — “usurps the rights” of World Eleven, and he urged the board members to “not issue their final approval.”
Meanwhile, in North Bay Village, Isabella Crespo, a mother, said Latham’s vision was “amazing.” It includes a 20,000-square-foot community center at the public school, and she said she understands it would support access to a prestigious private soccer program for kids.
“I think it should be accessible during school hours for school kids and then maybe weekends, evenings, after 6 or 7 for private institutions,” Crespo said.
Crespo said her son Aiden Welch stands to benefit because as a first-grade student at Treasure Island Elementary School, he already has that passion for soccer. He practices after school and said he is confident about his teammates’ passion for the sport too.
“My team is so good that they always score,” Aiden said.
Latham said that as a mayor he is and has been prioritizing the needs of the community and this is why the project in North Bay Village is moving forward.
“The project is really for our kids … During school hours, if the school board were to be able to move forward with this, whatever is built on the school property belongs to the kid going to school and no one else is intervening at that time,” Latham said.
Garcia’s lawsuit on behalf of World Eleven against the village and Latham is a claim for injunctive relief and for damages in excess of $50,000, records show.
Copyright 2023 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.
