At this level, that kind of pettiness shown by sandiegosoccerlover offends me. For the 90 minutes on the field, I want my team to absolutely destroy yours. For the rest of the time, I want everyone to be successful, to bring in money, and to survive, for the good of the league, and for soccer in general at D4 level. We're all in this together.
And people wonder why I blamed Boca for being the likely culprits that made an issue of this... Classless man, really classless. Hopefully the Flash beat the crap out of your guys again on the second leg.
yeah, it all depends on what you post you're first comment towards sandiegosoccerlover was unnecessary, and your obvious dislike for boca pops up in other threads, its fine that you dislike them I just have a problem being reminded of it now his or her post was classless, but you didn't have to make a jab at boca
FYI - Best sandiegosoccerlover quote ever! (from the San Diego Boca thread) "PAPO NEEDS TO LEAVE!!! This so called coach is the reason for the bad results in the past games. Also the squad SD BOCA have is a joke!! BIG CHANGES have to be done in the BOCA squad starting with that coach. WHAT A DISAPOINTMENT!! Clent is making YAN look VERY VERY bad. WAKE UP BOCA!!!!" Gonna have to agree with you on this one sandiegosoccerlover. On this one you are the expert!
So your issue is not so much with the rule as it is with the system that helps (or doesn't help, as the case may be) the teams stay in compliance with the rule?
I don't think any system in existance would make any difference whatsoever here. When a kid from England tells you, in an English accent, that he is a US citizen and has never played abroad, I'd be disinclined to register him as such based on common sense alone.
Did he tell you that? Unless I'm misunderstanding the situation here, the problem has nothing to do with him being English, or any sort of non-US citizen. It also has nothing to do with him having played abroad before (do we really expect teams to be picking up players, foreign or domestic who have never played before?!) It has to do with him still being under contract with another team while he played in those two games with the Flash. The same rules would apply to a US citizen and any contract with any other team, whether in the US or abroad. The problem lies in, how do teams know for sure if their players are under contract elsewhere, other than asking them? It may be easy enough to find out if a player is under contract with an MLS team or an EPL team, but to find out if he has signed a contract with an obscure semi-pro team in another country? Not so simple. It just seems like there should be a system in place to help teams investigate more fully if they need to. Like a database that teams could have access to where they could search the playing history of any given player, that would show a history of his past and present contracts. Or even at the league level, maybe a system that would raise a red flag if a team tried to register an already-committed player. Then maybe situations like this could be avoided before they happen, rather than having to clean up messes like the West is in now. I think that would benefit all parties concerned.
My understanding is that Underwood told Barton that he was a US citizen and had never played outside the US, so that the issue between himself and Bury Town would be "pushed under the carpet". Whether this is actually true or not, or whether it was more of a misunderstanding between Barton and Underwood, I really don't know. However Barton, for whatever reason, took the kid at his word, despite the fact that he was clearly English and had an English accent (which shows a shocking lack of common sense), and failed to check with the English FA about his contract status. He registered him as a domestic player, and nothing more was said about it because he was not registered to another club **in the US** However, all players registered with the USSF do have their statuses checked periodically, and apparently it was the USSF who did some digging into Underwood's background, and found out about this whole thing with Bury Town and how he walked out on them without cancelling his contract. The USSF told the NPSL people, who discovered that he was registered incorrectly, hadn't been given clearance as an international player, AND was under contract with two teams simultaneously, which led to the situation we have now. It seems to me that Barton was either incredibly naive in simply taking the kid at his word without bothering to check, or thought that the US admin system for these things was so unsophisticated that no-one would find out - because, as you say, Bury Town play in the 8th tier of English football and who's heard of Bury Town anyway? In either event, playing him when he did was a bad idea all round. Shame on the kid for misleading to Warren Barton - unintentional or not. Shame on Barton for not doing the proper due diligence. This may be the US fourth division, but you still have to do things properly. I agree with this entirely.
All we have to do now is get all the federations from all the countries to work together and share information, and we'll be in business!
Took the words right out of my mouth. It's 2011, the idea that all players are not put into a worldwide database, particularly once they turn pro, run by FIFA is just asinine. It would be incredibly easy to set up and would have prevented something like this from happening.
Why did the NPSL allow a player to be registered without clearance? Regardless of country of origin, in most leagues around the world they will not issue an official player card unless the player is eligible to play. Happens all the time, players sit and wait until paper work comes through and then they can be registered with the league. The process usually is: Player signs with team=>paperwork is obtained=>player is registered with and approved by league=>player can then play in league matches. If a team goes to the league to register the player and the league say OK, good to go, then why should the club not play that player? Conversely, if the team goes to register the player and the league says, "no, he is currently ineligible" and the team plays that player anyway illegally then there should be trouble. But from what I gather, the Flash tried to register a player that they claim they did not know was ineligible and then the NPSL cleared that player, issuing an official player card, but upon further research determined that their issuing a player card was a mistake and then blamed the team for playing a player who had a card and was cleared to play.
Sounds like it was the league that really screwed the pooch if that is in fact how it went down. And their punishing the Flash for their ineptitute just compounds the error. Lost a lot of respect for NPSL if that's the case.
You're assuming that Flash gave the NPSL the correct information in the first place. If - as I have been led to believe - Flash told the NPSL that their player was not under contract anywhere else, had the correct international clearance from the USSF, and was eligible to play, why would the league question that? The league HQ is a long way away from San Diego. At this level, you simply have to trust that what the team tells you is correct. The responsibility for ensuring that players are legal lies with the team in question, not the league. When it came to light that the player *was* under contract somewhere else, and did *not* have the correct international clearance from the USSF, how is that the league's fault? It's Flash's fault for jumping the gun and not waiting until after all the proper paperwork was completed before they played the player. Flash claim they didn't know he was ineligible. If they had done all the proper paperwork beforehand, they would have known one way or the other before they even went to NPSL HQ for his player card. On the other hand, it could be the player himself that misled Flash in his misguided eagerness to start playing before everything was finalized. In which case, again, the Flash are at fault for simply taking at face value the statements of their own player, who clearly does not understand USSF registration rules.
Probably true, but the NPSL still has to dock SD Flash points for the infraction. NPSL isn't going to punish itself (at least not directly). That's probably impractical anyways. Still, good to see some robust conversation about the Flash. How did the Fox Soccer thing work out?