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

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Prove it, please.[/QUOTE]

According to this link, it seems that there was a Portuguese Judge at TAS that alerted about the probable ineligibility of Moraes, so no credit for me.

 

FIFA doesn't really care how long you've been a citizen, just that you meet the residency requirement. Zelalem had already been in the US for 7 years at the time, so I doubt it was only for youth competitions. He hasn't done anything to warrant a USMNT call-up yet.

If the waiver was granted, why would the other countries be upset? He has lived almost exclusively in Ukraine for almost 7 years, but his residency was interrupted by a 6 month loan. It's certainly within the spirit of the waiver process to allow a player to start playing now rather than wait for 3 more years. The rules should be more about allowing players to play more than blocking them as long is no one is trying to gain an unfair advantage.

What Ukraine could be guilty of is not following the rules and the process. If that's the case, shame on them and they should be punished for not knowing (or not following) the rules.

I do wish FIFA would publish a list of everyone who is granted a waiver under these rules as well as one-time switches so that everyone knows upfront who is already eligible.

 

On the Ukrainian sites began to write that Rodrigues also violated these rules. He started playing in Luxembourg in 2013, and played for the national team already in 2017.

 

Zelalem's case seems pretty straightforward and is probably quite common. Not every exemption is as straightforward as Zelalem's though. From what I've read about the issue FIFA's approach to exemptions is a quite arbitrary one and they're rather secretive about it.

"Article 7 contains the rules for a player to change nationality and thus represent a new national team. This criteria is identical to Article 6.1, apart from item (d) which requires a player to have “…lived continuously for at least five years after the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant association.”

It should also be noted that there is also an exception to Article 7 (d). In cases where a player has lived continuously in a certain country for at least five years before the age of 18, and would therefore not meet the requirement of Article 7 (d) – the player can apply to Players’ Status Committee (the “Committee”) to request for an exception to this rule and become eligible. If the Committee can establish that the move was for reasons not related to football (e.g. family, asylum, cultural reasons etc.) then the exception will be granted. However, the burden of proof to establish this lies with the applicants i.e. the player and his representative association."

Not the same as is the case with Moraes wanting to play for Ukraine. Still there's admin involved, a request needs to be approved by FIFA, and Ukraine would have had to mess this up for the player to be ineligible.

PS FIFA stated during its Football Law Annual Review 2019, that the association passed more than 80 decisions relating to national team eligibility and change of association in 2018.

 

I do like the scrappy Luxembourgers. However lots of players in their team became eligible after acquiring Luxembourgish nationality. Their protest, in the Moraes case, is a bit splinter v. beam.

Ukraine might be able to use Rodrigues's (in)eligibility to scare Luxembourg or lodge a protest of their own. At first glance it seems to be one of those typical exemptions, like the Zelalem one in my previous post, i.e. he moved for reasons not related to football. According to this article, his mother moved to Luxembourg, where there already is a sizeable Portuguese community, to find work and at the age of 10 he was reunited with her. So far nothing unusual. Yet after his move he stayed at FC Metz for 3 years and went to school in Metz (he had to return to Luxembourg because he did poorly in school). This potentially is a breach of the exception to Article 7 (d). "In cases where a player has lived continuously in a certain country for at least five years before the age of 18. It's possible Luxembourg messed this up and fielded an ineligible player.

 

A very good point. Luxembourg losing their victory against Lithuania in the first game day would be a far worse punishment, because they don't win too often...

Overall, I hope that FFU dotted all i's and crossed all t's with Moraes before playing him. Although, truthfully, it would be inconsistent with how things are done at the FFU.

FFU's top official did claim that they had been informed by the "FIFA and UEFA experts" that Moraes is eligible to play. Of course, if FIFA finds otherwise, these experts' opinions would not matter.

 

Also known as "I asked the rules know-it-alls on the Ukraine equivalent of BS."

/s/ FIFA rules "expert"

 

What UEFA and FIFA "experts" say, means peanuts.

Only thing that would've counted is what UEFA and/or FIFA, say on the issue.

As Uefa has already been ruled out, according to this here:

https://www.record.pt/internacional...no-processo-de-naturalizacao-de-junior-moraes

It only leaves FIFA's say, on the issue.
Imho (I don't know if FIFA is aware, or not, about the issue ) , doesn't "look" good at all, for Ukraine.

 

Do you have any non-portuguese sources?

 

Great.

File a complaint about it, to Uefa and FIFA, next time he plays again for them. Remember that for any official complaint or protest, you must file it, at most, 24 to 48 hours after the match he wrongly played at, has finished. If not on time, your complaint can perfectly go down the waste basket, with no one looking at it.

At least for the case of J.Moraes, both Luxembourg and Portugal, filed theirs protest to Uefa, right away after Luxembourg's match vs. Ukraine.
Only took 2 days (after the match) for Uefa to start the respectful disciplinary proceeding (will take some time though, before they decide anything).

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/disciplinary/#post_4269019

look link above
(in english, from Uefa's main site)

 

Not really.

When Chile and Peru complained about the issue, they weren't really expecting to get any points from it, as they both knew that the deadline was long over, but what they really were after, was to have Bolivia sanctioned losing the points they had won in those games. Besides, no one really got aware about the whole issue, till one bolivian reporter decided to do a story about the issue for a certain newspaper, a few weeks after both matches were played.

Conmebol qualifiers are tight and with those points, Bolivia had become into a strong menace to almost everyone. With the evidence at hand, FIFA decided to act on its own, as for the particular case of Bolivia, it really wasn't the first time they did that, and this was needed so they stop doing it.

Unfortunately or fortunately, (depends on the eye of whom watches), FIFA doesn't punish taking points away from a team, if they are not going to give them after to someone else. In FIFA's rule book, at the time, was to punish the team replacing the original score with a 3-0 defeat instead.
So the gain of points and goal diferentiate, was a side effect of the whole situation, which at the end meant our team to not qualify to the WC, while at the same time, it qualified Peru instead (without those points and goals, we would've finished tied on points with Paraguay with a better goal diferentiate than theirs, one point over Peru, and we would've had to play against New Zeland, for Conmebol's last spot).

 

Nope. I am talking about a non-Portuguese source that definitively states that FFU has not discussed this issue with UEFA/FIFA officials.

 

Well, if that would be the case, Uefa wouldn't have started a case over it.
Don't you think so ?

.
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(And Uefa's pages, come in diferent languages, you pick the one you like the most)

 

UEFA has to have an investigation because protests had been launched. You can't just table them and ignore them. That they have started the investigation I already knew and needed no link about that.

 

It's also quite possible that a 6 month loan is not considered breaking residency. Considering how FIFA usually operates they will probably look at what EU law says. In my cursory reading it would seem that if Moraes was still under contract with his Ukrainian club and receiving payments directly through them (the most likely scenario) and the period was only 6 months then he still maintained residency.

 

In fact, it was just a 4-month loan.

 

I think UEFA was supposed to address the UNT/Moraes situation at the April 25 Disciplinary meeting. They have posted the notes about it on the UEFA's site but no mention of the issue at hand.

Am I missing something?

 

ok, the decision has come out. Both protests (by Portugal and Luxemburg) had been declined.

 

It seems that Luxemburg still wants to argue about this (in French)...
https://www.wort.lu/fr/sport/la-flf...ffaire-junior-moraes-5cdc273ada2cc1784e344260

 

China looking to join the mercenary ...
...I mean foreign naturalizing bandwagon for the first time:
https://radiichina.com/china-football-brazil-elkeson-goulart/

 

Yes 7 years is a while but weird to see a Brazilian with no Chionese heritage whatsoever get a free pass to the Chinese National team.
As the article points out it has never happed before.

 

Can't see how Ricardo Goulart is eligible for China given he's played an international for Brazil. Is there a Chinese grandmother or something?

Transfermarkt seems to think Elkeson has played U23 for Brazil, which if true would also make him ineligible.

 

I guess Goulart did not play in an official match which means he can still play for China as long as he fits FIFA requirements.

U23 does not cap tie you either. Remember Thiago Motta played for the Brazil U23 (that went to the Gold Cup) but then played for the Italian Senior National team in official matches.