Player Eligibility and Switching National Teams: Case Studies & General Discussion

That's great. But he has t retracted that.

My kids are military Brats, dual citizens born and raised in both the US and Germany. They stopped playing when we moved back to the US once they figured out the pay to play racket that it is.

None the less, they saw his comments as a personal affront to them and the circumstances of how they were born in Germany.

We Won't watch a single match with Arena as coach.

 

Meh.

I don't think he has to retract anything. The key word for me in one of the quotes is "all".
If "all" the players on the USA team are born in other countries it is his opinion that progress is not being made. IT is his right to believe that.

But he is not an idiot. He will play the best player he thinks best fits within his system no matter where they were born.

 

One of the aspects that Klinsmann was careless about was establishing the locker room leaders. He should have known better. When you have as many players raised abroad as he had in his tenure then you have to be careful to keep the national team mentality.

Arena has never been a guy to deny dual nationals opportunities. 8 years as an NT coach demonstrate that. But he will never lose sight of the locker room either. At a certain point he will make decisions that will keep his guys centered mentally.

Truthfully, it's really not so much an issue of divided allegiance but rather comradery. Guys like Carter-Vickers, Zelalem, etc. are not really an issue because they have been integrated for a while in the YNTs. Neither are recent citizens like Dwyer or Nagbe because they are familiar from MLS play.

 

Since French Guiana is not a FIFA member, CONCACAF cannot apply a FIFA rule regarding eligibility of players playing for this associate member, just as Catalonia football team can field Catalonian players that already played for Spain (e.g. Xavi, Fabregas, Pique). If CONCACAF accepts a team like French Guiana in a continental tournament, they are entitled to select players with a reasonable allegiance, even those with caps with France, since these Gold Cup matches are glorified friendlies for those "associated members", (i.e. matches that are not registered for the FIFA rankings procedure)
French Guiana could test this at the CAS, using the "Angloma precedent".

 

French Guiana goes with the automatic forfeit by starting Malouda:

Official lineup #FrenchGuiana #GoldCup2017 #GUF @DrinkBODYARMOR pic.twitter.com/s1R81Mxvzr

— Concacaf (@Concacaf) July 12, 2017

Lalas says it's automatically referred to the Disciplinary Committee rather than waiting for a protest (though that may not be the way it actually happens).

Dr. Joe came on and said that protests over eligibility have to be in 48 hours in advance, so it's up to CONCACAF to penalize. He says the team can keep a better score than the automatic 3-0 (4-0 or 5-2, for example).

 

French Guiana supporters have a good point when they ask why was he allowed to play in the Caribbean Cup and not the Gold Cup?
Also, why weren't they clear with the rules initially and only came out a day before the competition to say no?

Also, I don't know the validity of this argument but supporters claim that FIFA did not really recognize French Guiana until 2013. Malouda's Final match for France was in 2012.
Wouldn't it be similar to players who played for Yugoslavia and then decided to play for Croatia once their FA was formed?

It is all just a big mess.

 

French Guiana exists in kind of a nether-world. Whenever they play in a tournament, the organizers have to create rules for eligibility since they aren't subject to FIFA rules (and aren't able to take advantage of a one-time switch, for example). It sounds like the CFU, which runs the Caribbean Cup, used different eligibility rules than the Gold Cup. The old rule was 5 years after the last cap.

The Gold Cup rules were issued on March 1st, 2017, so the competitors had plenty of time to review them prior to the tournament. French Guiana qualified for the Gold Cup on November 9th. Current regulations: http://www.concacaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/170301_GC-Regulations-Final_EN.pdf

It's certainly similar to the Yugoslavia (or even Kosovo) case, but since they aren't a member of FIFA, there's no one to make that ruling. It's CONCACAF's tournament, so they get to make the rules on eligibility. If French Guiana wants to argue that 2013 is the magic creation date for football, then no other cap-tied players who played after 2013 can participate for FG going forward. I think they would prefer to go back to the old 5 year rule.

 

Statement from the French Guiana coach:

Here are Jaïr Karam’s full remarks on Florent Malouda after the draw vs. #HON, in French and English: pic.twitter.com/pAJ0uZ1i1K

— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) July 12, 2017

 

CAF/Zanzibar?

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/39305382

 

CONCACAF has ruled and there won't be a repeat forfeit:

CONCACAF ruled on Friday that the 0-0 draw against Honduras will now officially be ruled a 3-0 Honduras win by forfeit. The French Guiana federation will be fined an undisclosed amount, and Malouda has also been suspended two matches, which includes a stadium ban.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017...da-ruling-french-guiana-forfeit-gold-cup-game

 

A ruling made in the middle of the night (2.54am ET)? Why two matches instead of the whole tournament? How could the player be able to serve the suspension if is supposed to be ineligible to play in the first place?

French Guiana and Martinique are part of France, meaning that CONCACAF is practically allowing the French Football Federation to enter not one, but 2 squads of French players. Ruling that such squads can not use players of such regions because they played for the French national team.... well, if French Guiana, along with the FFF take this issue to TAS/CAS, it could become a legal mess. Even more as he was allowed to play in the Caribbean cup, a Concacaf sanctioned tournament.

Maybe the legal tangle could provide more excitement than this Gold cup edition

 

Can he suspended from games he's not eligible for?

 

IT is weird but yes he can be.
He was suspended from being on the bench and in the Stadium (Although he did find a way into the Stadium from what I saw on television.)

 

As I said in another thread Argentine media is reporting that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled in favor of Bolivia.
So the World Cup qualifying points taken away from them initially for fielding an ineligible player will be given back to them allegedly.

 

Nothing on their website about a ruling. But.

So it would make sense that the could have happened.

J

 

Note that according to this

http://remezcla.com/sports/chile-peru-bolivia-world-cup/

Bolivia won't get the points back - but Chile and Peru will lose the points they got.

J

 

Argentine media, has been saying it, since the begining.
At first, they said that FIFA wasn´t going to give the points to both Chile and Peru. But once FIFA ruled it, as it did, they started saying that it would be the CAS whom would act as how they want to believe it.

Truth is, that only once the CAS makes their official statement, it will be known what will happen to those points.

Even the bolivian FA officials, whom presented the claim to the CAS, have denied the rumours about the filtration of news regarding the case from the CAS.

http://beta.goal.com/es-ar/noticias...-fallo-del-tas-son/1pyj23s74a67q1jza7qxaa0wa5

 

AFC has the Northern Mariana Islands as an associate member. OFC has Niue, Tuvalu and Kiribati.

 

TAS-CAS has finally spoken:

http://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-i...iled-by-the-bolivian-football-federation.html

Confirmation that:
1) any player without any previous link to any association he wants to represent, has to comply with the five years continous period of playing in that given association, before becoming eligible, and

2) that at whatever moment, inside a two year period after the event, FIFA could start an investigation and declare a forfeit in any official international match where an ineligible player takes part.

Now, when FIFA could initiate this ex officio disciplinary proceedings, remains a mistery. People in the Panamian FA wonder what they should have done to make FIFA take an interest in the eligibility of Christian Gimenez

 

Wasn't Chaco eligible? It was 4 years ago so forgive me if I'm wrong, but I recall reading that the games he played for Argentina's U20 team were part of the qualifying tournament for the 2001 World Cup. However, Argentina was hosting the World Cup that year, so FIFA just considered those games to count as friendlies.

I imagine the FMF got some kind of assurance beforehand