17 January 2017

Horta hits out at FIFA & AFC over naturalised Brazilian East Timorese

East Timor’s former President, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta, has pointed fingers of blame at FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) over the crisis currently engulfing football in his country. East Timor is facing a lengthy exile from international football after its national football federation, the FFTL, was charged with using falsified documents to field ineligible Brazilian players in its national men’s team. It is also accused of bringing the game into disrepute.

“The Asian Football Confederation is not clean in this matter”, said Ramos Horta, via email. “They were the ones who for years supported Kabualdi (the FFTL’s President, Francisco Kalbuadi Lay) against attempts by many in Timor-Leste to oust him”.

As reported last month, Ramos Horta was involved in an extraordinary congress in 2007 called by disgruntled FFTL members to elect a new President. However, the man chosen to take the position claims he was prevented for doing so by the AFC, which was run at the time by Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Ramos Horta took to social media shortly after the charges were laid to declare the country’s name ‘is dirty like mud!’ He has also told The Sports Integrity Initiative he “bluntly confronted” Joseph S. Blatter about the state of Timorese football administration in 2011, when FIFA’s then-President was in the country campaigning for re-election. Blatter addressed the Timorese Parliament, though the speech was boycotted by Ramos Horta and a small group of other politicians.

East Timor’s use of naturalised Brazilian players began in the months after that visit, and by some counts has involved as many as 24 players. The practice had been under way for nearly four years before Palestine broke ranks to lodge a complaint with FIFA, following a drawn World Cup qualifier in October 2015.

While FIFA never followed through with an inquiry of substance, the complaint did lead to the Brazilian players being omitted from future World Cup qualifiers. However, when Asian Cup qualifiers began last year, a select number of Brazilians returned to the side, sparking the AFC’s interest. (The AFC had previously said the players in question were eligible to represent East Timor, though could not provide any grounds for that eligibility.)

If proven, the affair may give football authorities yet another example of the problems that can occur when football and politics mix. In East Timor, as in the rest of Asia, football is tightly interlinked with government, and it may be that initial enquires into the players’ eligibility were thwarted by government officials linked to the FFTL, who provided falsified documents suggesting the players or their parents were born in the country.

As private bodies, FIFA and the AFC would have little power to challenge these assertions, despite FIFA regulations banning such practices. ‘Any person holding a permanent nationality that is not dependent on residence in a certain Country is eligible to play for the representative teams of the Association of that Country’, reads Article 5.1 of the FIFA Statutes. ‘Any Player who refers to art. 5 par. 1 to assume a new nationality and who has not played international football in accordance with art. 5 par. 2 shall be eligible to play for the new representative team only if he fulfils one of the following conditions:

a) He was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
b) His biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
c) His grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
d) He has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant Association.’

The AFC’s Disciplinary Committee will meet later this month to decide on the Timorese matter.

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