Should only sovereign nations be allowed to be FIFA members? (Update: Kosovo & Gibraltar join FIFA)

FIFA should take it on a case by case basis, like they normally do.

 

No. Why does FIFA have to follow the UN?

 

What would be the benefit of removing members?

 

http://www.sporcle.com/games/scaryice/fifa_non_countries lists the 23 FIFA members that aren't countries:

American Samoa
Anguilla
Aruba
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Cook Islands
Curacao (the quiz calls them Netherlands Antilles which was their old name)
England
Faroe Islands
Guam
Hong Kong
Macau
Montserrat
New Caledonia
Northern Ireland
Palestine
Puerto Rico
Scotland
Tahiti
Turks and Caicos Islands
US Virgin Islands
Wales

By confederation:
AFC: Guam, Hong Kong, Macau, and Palestine* (would reduce membership from 46 to 42)
CAF: None
CONCACAF: Anguilla, Aruba, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos Islands, and US Virgin Islands (would reduce membership from 35 to 25)
CONMEBOL: None
OFC: American Samoa, Cook Islands, New Caledonia, and Tahiti (would reduce membership from 11 to 7)
UEFA: England, Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (would reduce membership from 53 to 48)

* means the quiz is old and I remember the United Nations recognizing Palestine. I don't want this to turn into a debate about whether an area should or should not be recognized by the United Nations.

 

Good work. One small nit. There would be 49 UEFA members. England, NI, Scotland, and Wales reduce from 4 to 1. Faroe Islands would be absorbed. Total reduction of 4 FAs.

 

Only someone who doesn't understand what FIFA means, can come with such a an idea.

FIFA = F.I.F.A. = Federation Internationale de Football Association

Since its begining, this has never been over nations nor countries.
It always has been about Federation Associations, where in its 10th article of its basic statutes (regarding admission of members) it considers, each country of having only one FA, unless it is stipulated from their inception (begining of its existence), which in case of England, Scotland, Wales and Northen Ireland was always considered as such (point 5); and/or for any local FA which has the authorization from the mother FA of the country to which it belongs, whom might be in a process of independence, to ask FIFA to be accepted (without the express authorization, no local FA can ask for admitance).(point 6)
So, basicly, you are asking to eliminate points 5 and 6 of its 10th article (regarding admission of members), which are in place since the birth and formation of FIFA.

Maybe you can say something on regards to point 6 (which seems to not have attached issues to it).

But on regards to point 5, it is untouchable as it is :

FIFA also has a compromise to always follow the laws and rules of the game (Article 6 of its basic statutes), which are established by the IFAB (International Football Association Board), which in its basic composition includes members of each of the 4 brittish Football Associations.
So if you exclude these 4 members from existence, you are also not recognizing the IFAB and what it is, and therefore you are not accepting the laws and rules this body, establishes for the game (at the end, you are also asking to remove completely article 6, which implies that there would be no rules for the game and for that to be feasible, you will have to start from scratch, making your own complete law and rule book, and maybe even must change the name of the game).

http://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/AFFederation/Generic/02/58/14/48/2015FIFAStatutesEN_Neutral.pdf

In other words, you really are asking for FIFA to stop existing, as it is.

 

Thanks for the correction.

 

And how would it benefit the football development in the Associations that are being removed? Look at Guam and Tahiti, both who have had relatively successful recent years. Remove them from FIFA and their regional confederations and you will never hear anything about football in Guam or Tahiti ever again in your life time after they are absorbed into the USA and French football associations, who will not care at all about some islands on the other side of the planet, who are unlikely to produce USA or France NT players, apart from the very occasional Christian Karembeu-type player.

 

At least Guam have an FA, why doesn't Connecticut? The people of Connecticut have something to answer for.

 

Guam gets their own FA because the USSF allow them to have one. The USSF have therefore admitted they don't want to control football in Guam. If the Connecticut State Soccer Association wanted to join FIFA, they would fail because they would not have the authorisation of the USSF.

 

In that case, USA wouldn't be able to participate in any World Cup. Since it's not a sovereign nation. It's a a private oligarchy owned by the Jewish banking cartel.

 

UN members list is no less ********ed up than FIFA's list. Lots of mistakes were made during de-colonization. Some of those countries aren't really sovereign, others aren't nations.

Ultimately FIFA's job is to promote soccer, so federations should be built in a way that they reach people and represent people.

If it was politically possible, it would even be a good idea to fracture FIFA federations even more, because following 'sovereign nation' borders just doesn't make sense in many places.

Some of these UN 'sovereign states' are only kept together due to UN support, but try to form a real national team, and it won't work. Or people in parts of the country won't feel represented by that national team.

 

What about the IOC? Didn't they recently change their rules for new membership by only allowing sovereign nations? I think it's why Macau hasn't been accepted (yet. Their request is still under review).
Olympians born in Northern Ireland can choose to represent either Ireland or Great Britain.
Those from Anguilla can only represent Great Britain.
Competitors from the Faroe Islands compete under the Danish flag.
No idea about Montserrat and others.

 

Actually, "Football Association" refers to the full name of the sport. In English that would be "association football" to be distinguished from "rugby football".

Among the 7 founding members of FIFA in 1904, the question to allow several federations for a single sovereign country was asked. That was the rule chosen by the older IOC. However at the time, the 7 founding members only represented birthing national federations and needed the participation of the 4 well-established British FA's not only to gain in credibility, but also because they were already ruling the IFAB, the body determining the laws of football. So the rule allowing non-sovereign nations to be represented in FIFA was really a special rule made for Britain.

As long as the lack of sovereignty is not a problem to determine players eligibility in national teams, then the fact some non-sovereign nations are represented in FIFA doesn't really bother me.

 

The Panamerican Games allow 41 entities, but Concacaf and Conmebol are 45 together, I prefer the IOC system for not allowing every british colony, province or military base around the world.
If Concacaf become 25 they can unificate with Conmebol this fast, but I gonna miss Puelto Lico.
But those allways can play in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-FIFA_international_football
A better move to "the 193/the world" a enormous pain to the rest, do you care for the world or the rest?

 

It is a very nice explanation, only that you are wrong in your first parragraph (over the rest of your post, I'm open to accept that it makes sense).

If you look at the link I provided at the bottom of my past post, before getting into anything else, it defines diferent concepts which will be used afterwards, and the 2 first concepts defined are, first FIFA, which is the one I already posted before, and secondly it defines what Association means :

1 FIFA: “Fédération Internationale de Football Association”.
2 Association: a football association recognised by FIFA. It is a member of FIFA, unless a different meaning is evident from the context.

It is very clear, that the second definition is refered to an administrative body and not to the name of the sport, as you say so. Here is the link again :

http://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/AFFederation/Generic/02/58/14/48/2015FIFAStatutesEN_Neutral.pdf
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You see, around the world, almost no one has the dispute of having another sport to be named as football, so when someone is refering to simply "football", it is what you might know as "association football". And when they want to refer to another sport that uses the word football, you have to add to it a second word to establish the diference, or no one will understand them (some might even have to put a new name to the game (example : soccer), to diferentiate it, with what is called as "football" at their country, but this "new" naming is only something for their country and not for the rest of the world)

 

Thanks for the link, but I respectfully disagree for the simple reason that it is grammatically incorrect (I'm French myself so I know quite well the language).

If the meaning would be the one you say, it would then be "Fédération Internationale des Associations de Football". Not only the order would be different, but the plural would be used for "Associations", which is not the case.

As a native French speaker, the name of FIFA has been a mystery during long years of my childhood precisely because it looks so wrong grammatically speaking. That's actually the reason why I've studied the case and actually found out that "Football Association" refers to the sport in itself.

You're perfectly correct. And that's the very same in French nowadays: football is football, rugby is rugby. It wasn't the case though in 1904 because of the way the sport emerged in England during the second half of the 19th century.

The thing is that football has popular roots, at the opposite of sports like polo, cricket or rowing. It originally comes from a popular practice known as "folk football" played with a large variety of rules accross the country. "Football Association" has always been the full name to specify the football variety codified by "the Football Association" in 1863. As a matter of fact, that codification was actually lousy and unpopular, so in the following years they've been changed multiple times to get it closer to the "Sheffield rules" which is the true root of modern football, but as all this was still managed by the Football Association, the name remained.

In France in the early 20th century, that approach of various codifications of football was still in mind, and to be fully accurate about the designated sport it made sense to make such a clarification in the name.

 

The UK didn't have any involvement, with the creation of FIFA (as a matter of fact, they took no part in it, at all).

The only countries whom participated in the creation of FIFA were : France, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland. Despite the UK not being there, the founding members since its beginings gave the IFAB, full authority in whatever rules and laws existed about the game, as a recognition to the UK over the game that they invented.

So Football was named, as how it was called beyond the UK's frontiers (where there was no need to diferentiate it, with nothing else).

In FIFA's naming the "Association" part refers specifically to the local administrative body of each of the country members.

http://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/who-we-are/history/
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On respect to how it should be written if it were in french, you may be right (I'm not french so you know better about that language, but I'm chilean instead, and here we talk spanish). In spanish (remember that Spain was one of the founding members), FIFA means "Federación Internacional de Football Asociado", and in this case "Asociado" refers to how diferent entities relate to each other.

 

What bothers me more are inconsistencies between confederation membership and FIFA membership. Guadeloupe for example who are CONCACAF members but not FIFA members.

Looks like UEFA's such case - Gibraltar - successfully protested at the CAS and FIFA have been ordered to reconsider:
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/36186932

 

The problem is there's no consistency so FIFA makes rules up as they go along. Which is why Gibraltar won it's appeal. I don't see any issue with a territory being able to compete as an independent federation since some territories want to compete internationally more than some independent countries do (Gibraltar vs Monaco). But there should be some universal standard applied such as:

Step 1) Establish a national governing body, a local league, and build a national stadium.

Step 2) Be voted into a regional confederation as an associate or full member. A territory would need approval from it's parent country before being admitted.

Step 3) Get a straight up or down vote from all members of FIFA. A simple majority is needed to become a new FIFA member.

Did I miss anything? Seems simple enough. I think based on these criteria you'd have about 10 members that would be getting an immediate vote at the next FIFA Congress.

 

One of the key components is to have an independent FA. In the case of Guadeloupe for example they do not have an independent FA, in fact Guadeloupe and Martinique are Departements of France (as opposed to Territories, kind of like Alaska & Hawaii being states of USA, as opposed to Puerto Rico, being territory). As such Guadeloupe does not have an independent FA, the french FA overseas football there through affiliate local groups in the same way it overseas regional football in departements on continental France.