Serbs do not show up for Kosovo talks

This story is also on Play The Game


Former Kosovo manager, Edmond Rugova

Kosovo’s footballers could have to wait another decade for international recognition. That is the view of the country’s former manager after the Serbian Football Association did not take up an invitation from FIFA for tri-partite talks with the Kosovans in Zurich.

Edmond Rugova, a former Yugoslavia U-20 international and player for the New York Cosmos, said: “I knew that the Serbian FA was not going to show up. Their pretext was that, the Kosovo FA does not exist.
“FIFA's invitation for [the] Kosovo FA to come to the table in Zurich in an official capacity for the first time ever acknowledges that the Kosovo FA does exist and that something should be done. This is going to be a long and drawn out process, three to five maybe 10 years. It took 20 years to get to this point. It's going to take another who knows what.”

The 45 minute meeting in Zurich on November 5 was hosted by FIFA president Sepp Blatter and also included secretary general Jerome Valcke and Geoff Thompson, former chairman of the Football Association in England.

Kosovan player transfers
The talks were primarily to discuss the issue of Kosovan players being transferred out of clubs in the former Yugoslav republic, whose independence is so far recognized by 63 countries but not yet the United Nations.

The Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) delegation, which included president Fadil Vokrri, secretary general, Eroll Salihu, and vice-presidents Agim Ademi and Bekim Haxhiu, were told that this was imminent.

At FIFA’s next executive committee meeting in Cape Town in December, the introduction of certificates allowing Kosovan players to be transferred internationally should be ratified, Blatter said.

“Now there is hope”
Without UN recognition, Kosovo cannot join FIFA and enter the European championship or World Cup but after the meeting Valcke told journalists that if another 30 countries recognize Kosovo’s independence then the FFK will be automatically admitted.

A two-year wait is generally needed but Valcke said that the leagues, regulations and structures were already in place.

Kosovo want to play international friendlies and to integrate their clubs into European competition. Neither were on the agenda in Zurich but Rugova, who quit his job as Kosovo’s manager earlier this year due to lack of fixtures, still believes that last week’s talks represent progress.

“The player transfer issue is a step in the right direction but the whole set of issues remain to be decided upon sometime in the future,” said Rugova, now chief executive of Kosovo’s biggest club, Prishtina FC.
“In the end this is a positive development, the door has been opened just a little bit, we'll have to wait and see how long it will take for it to open wide. In the mean time all of us in Kosovo football will have to work even harder, because now there is hope.”

Serbia declined to participate
Tomislav Karadzic, the president of the Football Association of Serbia, initially agreed to attend the talks and all an FAS spokesman would say to Play the Game about his no-show was: “The only fair way is to talk of Kosovo within Serbia.”

In a letter to Valcke, the FAS wrote: “Regarding your call to the meeting, we would like to inform you that talks on the issue have been held with all the relevant figures within the Serbian FA. According to the stances, which were expressed on the issue during the talks, we inform you that we are unable to accept the invitation for the proposed meeting.”

The Serbs do not recognize the FFK but an alternative Kosovan football association ran out of the Kosovan city of Mitrovica. After the meeting Valcke reassured the Kosovan delegation that the FFK was the only football association that FIFA represented in Kosovo.
UEFA have not been involved in the talks and a FIFA spokesperson told Play the Game: “We don't have any comments on the talks.”

A new meeting between FIFA and FFK has been arranged and will take place in Zurich on November 25.

Kosovo & Serbia FIFA talks

This story also appeared at Play The Game.

The football associations of Serbia and Kosovo will have their first official meeting in Zurich this Friday (November 5) in talks hosted by FIFA aimed at dragging the former Yugoslav republic out of sporting limbo.

Kosovo declared independence in February last year but has not been admitted into the United Nations (UN) – the key criteria for UEFA membership - after furious opposition from Serbia, which does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, and its key ally Russia.

UEFA would not comment but a FIFA spokesman confirmed the meeting and added: “The meeting will discuss some practical issues … like the transfer of players out of Kosovo need to be addressed.”

Geoff Thompson, the former chairman of the Football Association in England, will mediate between the two delegations led by Fadil Vokrri of the Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) with Tomislav Karadjic, president of the Serbian FA, also likely to attend.

Kosovan footballers have been left in limbo with players like Lorik Cana and Valon Behrami, who play in the English Premier League for Sunderland and West Ham respectively, switching nationality in order to play international football.

“We are waiting 10 years after the war for something better, 15,000 players are waiting and a community of 200,000 people is engaged in football in Kosovo and hoping for better days,” says Driton Latifi, a journalist and sports news editor at Kosovan newspaper Daily Lajm, who is traveling to Zurich. “Our players are going abroad like emigrants and not proper transfers.”

UEFA has already indicated that if the FFK is admitted, Kosovars playing international football for other nations will be getting the chance to switch nationality in a move that could decimate the Albanian team.

Cana is one of a number of ethnic Kosovars to have played for Albania, while Behrami turns out for Switzerland and the veteran Shefki Kuqi of TuS Koblenz in Germany has appeared for Finland more than 50 times.

The FFK applied to join FIFA, which insists that the matter is only to discuss practical issues not international representation, in October 2008 but the Kosovans need to join UEFA before being admitted to the world body and were rebuffed. In March this year during a visit to the Serbian capital of Belgrade, UEFA chairman Michel Platini declared: “Politics is not my job, and UEFA honours its statute.”

Edmond Rugova, a Kosovar who moved to the US and turned out for the New York Cosmos, returned to the land of his birth in 2006 to take over as manager of Kosovo’s nascent national team.

He masterminded a 1-0 win over 2006 world cup finalists Saudi Arabia but quit earlier this year after the FFK found organizing matches difficult. Friendlies with Qatar and Benin had to be cancelled and the Kosovo national side had to sneak into Sweden in March 2009 and play as the ‘Super Liga of Kosovo Selection’ for a match with Allsvenskan side Malmo, whose squad includes exiled Kosovars, Labinot Harbuzi and Agon Mehmeti.
A weakened Kosovan side lost 5-0 and shortly after that match, Rugova returned to the US.

Albert Bunjaku, formerly the coach of Kalmar FF in Sweden, took over as Kosovo’s coach but Rugova has returned to Kosovo as chief executive of the country’s biggest club, FC Prishtina and hopeful of some progress in Zurich.

The talks are not the first time that FIFA has tried to resolve a political impasse. In September 2007, FIFA invited the football associations in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus together for talks.

These continued for 18 months but collapsed in April 2009, after a change in government in the enclave, which declared independence in 1982, which went largely ignored in contrast to Kosovo, whose independence has so far been accepted by 63 countries.

2009 Greenland Championships

A match on Greenland's first artificial pitch in Qaqortoq

The following article is also on NordicFootball & photos of the championships can be found at Bent Petersen's site

For the Zeeb family, the 2009 Greenlandic national championships will be a competition they never forget.
G-44 coach Gunnar Zeeb picked four of his sons for the final with Uummannaq’s FC Malamuk for the final but no-one could accuse him of nepotism after his side ran out comprehensive 3-0 winners in Qeqertarsuaq and claim the national title for the first time.
Right midfielder Hans-Jørgen Zeeb put G-44 1-0 at half-time before two goals from his brother Zakorat Zeeb sealed a win. Goalkeeper Johan-Frederik Zeeb kept a clean sheet, enabling his brother and G-44’s captain, Nuknnguaq Zeeb, to lift the trophy.
Only 800 people live in Qeqertarsuaq but a crowd of 600 turned out for the final, which was played on a pitch only 70 metres from the sea.
“There is a wonderful view from the football pitch,” says Jens Tang Olesen, manager of Greenland’s national team, who was in Qeqertarsuaq. “You can always see a lot of icebergs, and many times you can see whales swimming around this iceberg. Sometimes you can see a very special experience, when a big iceberg turns round – that happened this year [during] the national song before the final.”
With no roads between any of Greenland’s towns, teams only play locally except for the national championships, when eight sides emerge from regional qualifiers and converge on one town for a series of play-offs.
G-44 from Qeqertarsuaq qualified as hosts but holders B-67 and K-33, the losing finalists at the 2008 finals in Qaqortoq, were both eliminated in the qualifiers, which saw FC Malamuk emerge as northern Greenland’s representative and E-54 qualify from the south.
ATA qualified from east Greenland along with two sides from the middle of the island, NUK and SAK. From Disko, N48 qualified along with regional rivals KB-84, who won a play-off against another side from northern Greenland.
G-44 topped their group with two wins and a draw to qualify for a semi-final with Sisimiut team SKA, who were dispatched 3-2. FC Malamuk lost their opener to NUK by two goals to one but recovered to win their next two games before thumping E-54 from Nanortalik by 4-0 in their semi-final.
Jens Tang Olesen adds: “There was a lot of talented players on both finalists, who tried to play organized football despite the pitch of sand.”
Qeqertarsuaq had never hosted the national finals until this year and footballers travelling to Disko Island are all aware that the area is the scene of Greenlandic football’s greatest tragedy.
On August 8 2004, three Greenlanders, Karl Olsen, aged 35, Martin Larsen, 40, and 43-year-old Kristian Davidsen set sail from Aasiaat across Disko Bay to play in a veterans’ game in Qeqertarsuaq – but never came home.
The trip only takes an hour or so but Disko Bay is littered with smaller islands and after playing the game, the trio got lost. A massive air and sea search ensued but the three players, who were all married with children, could not be found. The hunt was called off on August 16 only for the three players to be found the following June on Hareoe Island, where their boat had got stuck.
The players had written SOS in stones on the side of the island and built a rough shelter from driftwood but had little chance of survival in Greenlandic winter and froze to death all for a game of football.
Football in Greenland is an isolated, hard game. Not just the short season – May to August in the warmer south, even shorter further north – and the rough sandy pitches that make wearing shorts impossible but also the lack of recognition from the rest of the world.
Like Greenland, the Faroe Islands are semi-autonomous members of the Danish Commonwealth and the winners of the Faroese league title get a share of the €10.3 million pot of cash put aside annually by UEFA for teams eliminated in the early rounds of the Champions League.
G44 will enjoy no such luxury. Unlike Greenland, the Faroes got into UEFA and FIFA before the door was slammed shut in a fudge to keep Spain on side.
Seeing the Faroes gain entry into FIFA in 1988 and the U$D1 million every four years that comes with membership of the world body, the British colony of Gibraltar tried to follow suit in the late 1990s.
Spain pledged to quit every single UEFA and FIFA competition if Gibraltar was allowed to join so the rules were conveniently changed – now all new UEFA members need to be members of the United Nations.
The new rule was not retrospective to ensure that the four Home Nations, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, retained FIFA membership. The Faroes stayed in too but Greenland, who only wanted some financial help for their 5,000-plus players to suppliment the one that recently opened in and not to join the World Cup gravy train, were shut out.
Greenland has just one artificial pitch, which opened recently in Qaqortoq, and there is a shirt sponsorship deal with Coca Cola but the team is limited to games in the bi-annual Island Games, a sort of bi-annual Olympics for islands, but after playing in every tournament since 1989, the Greenlanders missed the 2007 event in Rhodes due to lack of money.
The team did play in this year’s event in the Finnish isle of Aland but two key Danish-based players, Aarhus Fremand’s Niklas Kreutzmann and Pelle Mortensen, who is on the books at Odense, were missing. Kreutzmann was doing his dental exams and Mortensen had gone traveling.
Greenland went down 4-0 to Aland then lost 6-0 to Menorca before an encouraging 3-1 win over 2005 winners, the Shetlands, only to lose a play-off to 11th place to Gotland. “We have no more plans for the Greenland national team just now,” sighs Jens Tang Olesen.
Some Greenlandic footballers wanting to better themselves have gone to Denmark like national team captain Jan Nielsen but like many of their compatriots from an island with a population of just 55,000, they found fitting in hard.
Nielsen had trials with top Danish side Brondby and played in the Icelandic first division for KR Reykjavik but today can be found playing for FC Nanoq, a Copenhagen-based team playing in regional Danish football. Nielsen says: “Talented players come here from Greenland but they get homesick and go home, there’s a big cultural difference. FC Nanoq is to make them feel at home.”
For those Greenlandic footballers still back home like the Zeeb brothers, there is only next year’s finals and the possibility of a place in the squad for the next Island Games on the Isle of Wight in southern England in 2011.

World Soccer

Below are links to electronic versions of some of my World Soccer pieces. Most but not all are about Non-FIFA teams.

December 2009 - Pacific Islands
October 2009 - Guam
September 2009 - 2009 Island Games in Aland
August 2009 - Monaco
July 2009 - Kosovo
June 2009 - San Marino
January 2009 - Viva World Cup
March 2008 - Zanzibar at CECAFA Cup
December 2008 - Jersey International Tournament

Viva World Cup III report

A version of this story is also on the Play The Game website

A football tournament staged by the Italian separatist party in, Lega Nord, was played out with the tacit permission of the Italian sporting authorities according to the organizers.
FIFA insists on separating politics and sport but the week-long third edition of the Viva World Cup was staged and won by Padania, a team representing northern Italy, with no interference from the world body or the Italian authorities.
Jean Luc Kit, secretary general at the organisers, the NF Board, which represents around 30 teams unable to join FIFA, said: “There was no problem in general with politics. It was a big step to the future.”
The hosts, Padania, won the tournament beating Kurdistan 2-0 with two second half goals in front of 4,000 fans at the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi in Verona.
Padania spokesman and organizer Claudio Gallo said: “[There were] no interferences from the FIGC (Italian Football Federation). I have a personal friendship with President Gianni Petrucci and General Secretary Raffaele Pagnozzi of CONI (Italian Olympic Committee), and they do not have interest in doing interferences with this tournament.”
The tournament ran in the last week of June and six teams entered with the final screened on satellite TV channel Rai Sport – part of the media empire of Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi - and there was coverage on a number of other TV stations, including Rai Sport, Canale 5 and Rai 3.
Umberto Bossi, the Lega Nord leader, even turned down a regular Monday night dinner with Berlusconi to watch Padania’s opening game a 1-0 win over Occitania, a team comprised of people able to speak the ancient language of southern France.
“I’m going to watch the Padania national team play,” Bossi is reported as saying. “It’s more important than Berlusconi. I’ll see him tomorrow.”
The organisers claim that an average of 1,000 fans watched each of the matches in the week long series but independent reports suggest that at most 1,100 fans watched Padania’s opening game at the Stadio Silvio Piola in Novara. Other reports put the attendance as far lower.
The hosts’ team included a number of professionals, including Marco Murriero, a goalkeeper who has played with Udinese and Bellinzona, Giuliano Gentilini, a midfielder at Chievo Verona, and midfielder Gianpietro Piovani, who has played with Piacenza , Livorno and Brescia and scored the winner against Occitania.
Despite the NF Board’s claim that the tournament was not affected by politics, Monaco, who took part in the first Viva World Cup in 2006 in Hyeres, southern France, sat the tournament out due to state opposition to the idea of playing in a tournament with links to Lega Nord.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the breakaway state established in the north of the Mediterranean state, also declined to take part because Kurdistan’s involvement.
“I do not think that TRNC will ever play a team from Kurdistan,” said one source close to the Turkish Cypriot FA.
The Sami, the tribal people of northern Scandinavia, finished third after a drawing 4-4 in normal time with Provence then winning 5-4 on penalties. Occitania beat the Maltese island of Gozo 2-1 to secure fifth place but this result was overturned by a subsequent disciplinary commission and Gozo were awarded fifth place.
The tournament was the third Viva World Cup. In 2006, the Sami beat Monaco 21-1 in the final and last year Padania beat a team from the Aramean Suryoye minority in Sweden by 2-0 in a final staged in Gellivare in Swedish Samiland.
Gozo are due to stage the next Viva World Cup in 2010. “I think we’ll probably go to Gozo next year in order to find some team ready to defeat us,” added Mr Gallo.

Viva World Cup Mark III

The following story was also published on the Play The Game website during May.

Six teams have entered the third Viva World Cup (VWC) to be staged in northern Italy next month for ‘national’ football sides shunned by FIFA
Padania – a team promoted by the Italian separatist political movement Lega Nord – are hosting the event, which will be staged between June 22 and June 27 in Brescia, Varese and Verona.

The hosts, Kurdistan and a team representing the Occitan-speaking people of southern France will play each other in group one.

In group two, the Sapmi tribe of northern Scandinavia – more commonly known as the Lapps – will take on the French region of Provence and the Maltese island of Gozo.

Two teams from each group will qualify for the semi-finals with the final to be held in the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi in Verona on June 27 at 5.00pm.
Although up to 15 teams expressed interest in taking part to the organisers, the New Federation (NF) Board, the number of entries for the third VWC is still an improvement on the first two events.

The breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) are understood to be sitting out the event because the Kurds – mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan – are playing and Turkey has long-standing political problems with the Kurds.
Gozo, who will host the fourth VWC next year, make their debut but the other five teams have all played in previous events.

The first VWC hosted by Occitania in 2006 was blighted by withdrawals after the TRNC fell out with the NF Board and staged their own rival eight team event, paying travel expenses for the visiting teams.

Only three teams went to Occitania with the Sapmi beating Monaco 21-1 in the final.

Last year’s second event was far closer and five teams travelled to Gällivare Swedish Samiland with Padania beating a team representing the Aramean Suryoye minority group from Sweden 2-0 in the final.

North Mariana/Niue

The following story was written for Play The Game

The Oceania Football Confederation, one of FIFA’s smallest regional confederations, could be weakened by the exit of more members as chaos surrounds the status of Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands (CNMI).

Australia, the OFC’s biggest member and only potential world cup host, left in 2006 for the rival Asian Football Confederation and the CNMI is set to follow suit.

OFC secretary Tai Nicholas told PTG: “We have received a request from them that they wish to resign from OFC and become a member of AFC.

“In accordance with the OFC Statutes, only the congress can approve this request and our next OFC congress is 1 June 2009. Once the OFC congress approves Northern Marianas to resign (sic) only then are they free to then apply to the Asian Football Confederation.”

The OFC is convinced that the CNMI - a group of North Pacific islands with a 90,000 population - is an associate member but the North Marianas Islands FA was accepted as a subsidiary of the AFC in December 2006.

Only last month, North Mariana played in the preliminary round of the East Asian Football Championship (EAFF) in Guam.

The Japanese FA – a member of the AFC - supplied North Mariana with a coach, Sugao Kanbe but his team lost all three matches against the hosts, Macau and Mongolia.

The EAFF is a subsidiary of the AFC and the North Mariana Islands FA turned to the body after initial overtures to the OFC received no response.

“We wrote correspondence to Oceania numerous times and never got any response,” said Peter Coleman, a US attorney, who set up the North Mariana Islands FA in 2005 and became secretary after being posted to Saipan, the biggest islands in the CNMI.

“When I organized the league [in North Mariana] there had been many years without any formally organized football on the island; therefore, [I am] not sure where Oceania gets their information about any association our commonwealth may have had in the past.”

The North Mariana Islands FA has since undergone a number of staff changes but one former member said: “Apparently, FIFA had a bird when they found out just before the [EAFF 2010 qualifying] tournament that a non-FIFA nation [was] competing.”

The episode illustrates the difficulty that FIFA has in controlling membership in its six regional confederations spread across the globe.

Following Australia’s withdrawal, the OFC only has 11 full members: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Both rugby codes are more popular than football in many parts of Oceania and the OFC plays a vital role in developing the game in isolated territories but the grouping is FIFA’s weakest confederation with little prospect of being strengthened by new members.

At a congress in Tahiti in November 2006, Kiribati and Tuvalu joined Oceania as associate members. Football representatives from the Federated States of Micronesia also attended that congress but did not join.

To join FIFA and get the USD 1 million available every four years available to members of the world body, countries must first be full members of a regional confederation and Mr Nicholas adds: “At present the associate members don’t satisfy the criteria for full FIFA membership.”

Once North Mariana go, the OFC will only have three associate members and that number could even drop further. The OFC’s other associate member is Nuie Island, a tiny New Zealand administered Pacific atoll with a population of only 5,000.

“Niue has been associate members since the early 90’s but they are too small that they will never be able to satisfy FIFA membership requirements and they will always be an associate member,” adds Mr Nicholas. “In fact recently it is noted there is no football development and we may therefore take them off our membership register.”

Another OFC associate, Tuvalu – a scattering of islands with only 10 square miles of land and a population of 12,000 – managed to send a team to the 2007 South Pacific Games. The tournament was used by FIFA as the first round of Oceania qualifiers for the 2010 world cup, which put the Tuvalu team in the bizarre situation of trying to qualify for a tournament they were not officially eligible for.

Not unlike North Mariana and the 2010 EAFF championship.

Northern Cyprus

The following story of mine on FIFA's failed attempts to reunite the two football associations in Cyprus appeared on the Play The Game website.

FIFA has abandoned attempts to reunite the football associations in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus have broken down after change of government in the breakaway enclave.

The Kibris Turk Futbol Federasyonu (CTFA) split from the main Cyprus Football Association (CFA) in 1955 and the two sides shunned each other until September 2007, when FIFA hosted a series of talks that failed to resolve anything but continued until the recent landslide election won in the north by the right-wing National Unity Party (NUP).

A FIFA spokesman told PTG: “For Cyprus, the FIFA Executive Committee has decided to close the file since the CTFA did not agree to sign the FIFA-UEFA proposal for football on the island of Cyprus.”

FIFA and the CFA presented an eight-point plan for the CTFA, which allowed Turkish Cypriot clubs to play overseas opposition but did not permit the Turkish Cypriot ‘national’ team to play internationals.

The CTFA would not sign the plan but the two sides kept on talking until the recent elections.

A source close to the talks said: “Unfortunately there is no contact either with FIFA or with CFA. Everything [has] returned to the beginning. I can't say there will be any contact nowadays due to the change of political party in government. The old government has come back and we don't know what their new vision is.”

A campaign, Balls to Embargoes, was started in 2006 to end the isolation of Northern Cypriot players, who are classed as overseas players in Turkey. A handful of Northern Cypriot players have played in the professional CFA league but one of the first to do so, Sabri Selden, who signed for Nea Salimina in 2002, was publicly castigated by the TRNC’s then nationalist president Rauf Denktas. Since then, Denktas has been replaced by the more moderate Mehmet Ali Talat, who began talks to discuss reuniting the island but his mandate has been undermined by the NUP’s recent success.

In the 1970s after Turkey’s invasion of the top half of Cyprus, a Northern Cyprus national team was permitted to play friendly matches against FIFA members but this ended when the TRNC formally declared independence in 1983.

FIFA and UEFA have since tightened their entry rules to appease Spanish concerns over Gibraltar fielding a national team and new FIFA members have to be recognized by the ‘international community’ as a country but Kosovo’s declaration of independence is testing that rule.

In 2007, Kosovo beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 in Ankara but since declaring independence the following year a request made to FIFA to emulate Northern Cyprus in the 1970s and just play international friendlies has languished. The subject has been discussed at FIFA Executive Committee meetings this year but Kosovo first need to join UEFA.

Kosovo’s independence is recognized by 58 nations around the world but to join UEFA the criterion is more specific than FIFA’s and requires United Nations (UN) membership.

On March 3, UEFA president visited Serbia, who bitterly oppose Kosovo’s attempts top join the UN, and promised the Serbia Football Association in Belgrade said: “UEFA honors its statute, which is clear: a state that does not belong to the UN cannot become a member of the organization, but I would like for us to find a way for young people in Kosovo to play football.”

On March 28, Kosovo’s manager Edmond Rugova took his team to Sweden for a friendly against Malmo FF, who was lost 5-0. Rugova said: “We went there with a different name and had to call ourselves ‘Super Liga of Kosovo Selection’ and not a national team to disguise ourselves.

“We’ve done all we can. It’s mind-boggling. It doesn’t make sense. Who gains from segregation? Football is about playing together.”

Regarding Kosovo, FIFA said: “The FIFA Executive Committee confirmed at the latest meetings in Tokyo (Dec 2008) and Zurich (March 2009) its support for the UEFA Executive Committee’s decision that member associations not be permitted to contest friendly matches with the Kosovo football association.”

Groundtastic

A shorter version of the following article appears in the latest issue (No.55, Winter 2008) of Groundtastic magazine.

FIFA is supposed to control football, to set the rules and criteria for stadia used for international football but what about games in places that aren’t in the world game’s governing body?

FIFA doesn’t accept just any old place that applies: Greenland, Gibraltar, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), North Mariana in the Pacific, Zanzibar, Tibet.

All these places have been shunned by FIFA but football is still played in all of them in stadia of all sorts of shapes and sizes.

In November 2006, the TRNC hosted a tournament for eight sides with the final played in the 28,000 capacity Atatürk Stadium (see photos) in the Turkish side of Nicosia, the island’s capital that was divided by Turkey’s invasion in 1974.

Since that invasion and a declaration of independence nine years later, the TRNC has been a pariah nation recognised only by its Turkish conquerors.

The Northern Cypriots had a national team but could find no-one to play either abroad or at home in their Atatürk national stadium.

The Atatürk was built by Ozer Esenyl, the father of Ahmet Esenyel, who captained this national team that could not exist until the early part of this decade.

The Atatürk was opened by a match between Turkish sides Fenerbahçe and Sariyer and hosted other overseas teams, such as Neuchatel Xamax from Switzerland, but the KTFF was rejected by FIFA in 1995 and became more isolated after then.

The national team has been more proactive in recent years and played a handful of games against fellow pariah nations, such as Kosovo. In the summer of 2007, Luton Town came to the TRNC for a training camp and a friendly game was arranged for July 11 at the Atatürk, which is also home to Çetinkaya, the last Turkish club to win the all-island league in 1952/53 before the Turks split off to form their own federation.

The game was cancelled after complaints by the Greek Cypriots so Luton played a training match at the Atatürk between themselves that was beamed all over the world. That coverage finally secured the KTFF a meeting with FIFA and the Greek Cypriots.

Whether the Atatürk meets FIFA’s grounds criteria if a breakthrough is secured remains to be seen.

The ground is easily the biggest in the TRNC but photos can be deceiving. There are floodlights and the ground probably does hold the 28,000 people that the KTFF claim but they will not all be sitting down on seats.

The seating is only in two areas either side of the half-way line even that is probably rarely stretched as Çetinkaya only attract 2,000 fans at best for a big game and the national team even less.

Will the Atatürk ever host a match between Cyprus and the TRNC? FIFA insists not but FIFA’s grasp on the fringes of international football is not what it seems.

Gibraltar applied to join FIFA in the late 1990s only for Spain to threaten to pull its national and club teams out of every international competition.

UEFA could not let that happen so they changed their entry criteria so that all new members had to be in the United Nations.

FIFA found a different reason and cited the 3,000 capacity Victoria Stadium, which is situated on an isthmus of land between the British colony and the Spanish border town of La Linea.

That isthmus also accommodates the territory’s airport, which opened to international flights from Spain for the first time in 2007. FIFA though, claim the stadium cannot host international football because the ownership has never been decided.

The pitch at the stadium is the only one in Gibraltar and used all-day long by schoolchildren then the local leagues so the Gibraltar Football Association laid an artificial surface years ago. Bizarrely, that third generation pitch is a FIFA approved playing surface.

This was done years ago through the English FA as the GFA was an affiliate until falling out with the motherland as the row with FIFA and UEFA over membership progressed.

At least Gibraltar has a stadium as many of the lands that FIFA has forgotten cannot even play at home.

In Monaco, the amateur national side is not allowed to play in the 20,000 capacity Stade Louis II stadium, which is home to the only club in Monaco, ASM.

ASM compete in the French league and the government is concerned that if the Fédération Monégasque de Football joined UEFA then ASM may have to leave the French league so the FMF are tacitly accepted but officially unrecognized.

And if Monaco’s national team did play a match at the Stade Louis II stadium against the likes of Northern Cyprus, then ASM could face sanctions from FIFA.

In 2006, the TRNC journeyed to southern France to take on a side representing speakers of the ancient language of Occitània in a run-down council stadium in Vendargues as this was the only ground that could host the tie without FIFA sanctions.

That is also why the 5,000 capacity Vanlose Stadium in Denmark hosted Tibet’s first match in 2001.

A team of exiled players from the Himalayan kingdom, which was invaded by China in 1950, journeyed to Copenhagen to take on Greenland but no clubs would host the game for fear of FIFA sanctions.

The Greenlanders have even more problems playing as the season in their Arctic island is just three months long and all the pitches are sand. As a result, all Greenland’s international matches are away games but the Greenlandic FA are aiming to change that situation.

Rejected by FIFA in the late 1990s, Greenland hope to lay an artificial surface and host a four-team tournament as part of a campaign to encourage tourists to the island.

Greenland is semi-autonomous from Denmark but the cost of laying the pitch would be four times more than in Western Europe with only one air route between Copenhagen and Nuuk.

Despite this, the Greenlanders are confident of laying the surface to host a four-team event in three to four years time then adding stands later on. Greenland want to show that being forgotten by FIFA is no obstacle to playing international football.

Soccer International

The following article was published in the September 2008 issue of Australian football magazine, Soccer International. A shorter version is on the Sportingo network & was picked up by other sites, including Kosovocompromise

This September, Europe’s national teams start their qualifying matches for the 2012 World Cup with their newest member – Montenegro – joining the chase for a place in South Africa.

Across the Mediterranean from the former Yugoslavian republic, another ‘country’ has been eying membership of European and world football’s governing bodies, UEFA and FIFA respectively.
The problem for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is that, unlike Montenegro, which peacefully seceded from Serbia and joined UEFA and FIFA without objection, no-one believes that the TRNC is even a country.
As a new book, Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot, shows the pariah state of the TRNC is one of many would-be members and the Northern Cypriots do at least have FIFA’s ear.
Cyprus was a British colony until securing independence in 1960 but the island’s Greek and Turkish communities had always been at odds, particularly on the football field.
Teams from both communities played in an all-island league until 1955, when Çetinkaya, the strongest Turkish Cypriot side and the last winners of the all-island league in 1952/53, were barred from playing a match against a Greek Cypriot side, Pezoporikos, in the capital Nicosia.
The Turkish Cypriot sides split off and formed their own federation, the Kıbrıs Türk Futbol Federasyonu (KTFF) that same year.
When independence was declared, the Turkish Cypriots insisted that the deal included separate sporting bodies for the two communities, who were soon feuding.
The inter-communal violence saw the Turkish Cypriots retreat to the north of the island and worsened until, in 1974 a Greek-inspired coup prompted Turkey to invade the top half of the island in an invasion that left 6,000 people dead and many homeless.
After this invasion, the KTFF organized ad hoc ‘international’ matches against the likes of Saudi Arabia, Libya, Malaysia and Turkey. No attempt was made to join FIFA but these friendlies were played with the tacit approval of then FIFA general secretary Dr Helmut Kaiser.
In 1983, that all ended. The TRNC declared itself a republic under hardline nationalist leader Rauf Denktas in a declaration still only recognized by the Northern Cypriot’s Turkish sponsors.
The KTFF was thrown into international isolation and the Turkish Cypriot footballers were left in a curious limbo.
The obvious place for ambitious players wanting to make a living from the game was Turkey but to the Turks, the TRNC was a foreign country and footballers from there were treated as overseas players.
“Everyone asks me what is your nationality and I say ‘the Turkish part of Cyprus ‘ and everyone has the same answer: ‘that is a problem’,” says Coscun Ulusoy of his attempts to find a club in Turkey.
In the southern Greek-dominated part of Cyprus, football has taken off in recent years and is professional. One Turkish Cypriot player, Sabri Senden, moved down south to join first division side Nea Salamina only to find himself branded a “weak character” by President Denktas.
In 2004, Denktas was replaced as president by the more moderate Mehmet Ali Talat, who favoured uniting the island under a UN plan, which also allowed for separate sporting teams following the UK model.
TRNC prime minister Ferdi Sabit Soyer says: “The UN solution has an idea for a common national team and a separate one. If we can have a common team that is good, but maybe we follow the UK plan. We can decide this at the table.”
The political situation eased and Ulusoy also went south to play for Salamina but getting round that table was proving difficult as Cyprus had joined the European Union in 2004 and had little impetus to concede any ground.
Around this time, the TRNC started using football to try and establish the idea of Northern Cyprus as a ‘nation’.
A Northern Cyprus team started playing friendless against other teams shunned by FIFA, such as Lapland, Zanzibar and Gibraltar and between 2005 and 2006 won three tournament, the Peace Cup played in the TRNC, the Wild Cup in Hamburg in 2006 and the eight-team ELF Cup played back at home in 2006.
Finally, a pre-season visit by English football league club Luton Town produced a break through. Luton came for a training camp and organised a friendly against Çetinkaya, which the Greek Cypriots managed to get cancelled after strong protests. In response, TRNC politicians cancelled talks with their counterparts in the south and FIFA finally intervened.
Last September, the KTFF and the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) were invited to FIFA’s headquarters for talks. The KTFF recruited Brussels-based lobbyists Independent Diplomats and the talks have been ongoing ever since. A break-through seemed unlikely as the KTFF refused to merge with the CFA but the recent election of communist president Demetris Christofias, who favours uniting the island, are likely to help.
A key player in the case will be Marios Lafkaritis, who is UEFA’s honorary treasurer and one of two delegates elected specifically onto UEFA’s executive to represent smaller nations along with Malta’s Joe Mifsud. Lafkaritis also joined the FIFA executive last year.
For would-be members, trying to break into the FIFA elite involves winning over power brokers such as Lefkaritis or Russia’s Viacheslav Koloskov in the case of another aspiring FIFA member - Kosovo.
Koloskov is also on the FIFA executive and a key ally of Serbia from whom Kosovo universally seceded in February this year after being run under a United Nations (UN) mandate since the end of the Balkans War.
The Serbs vehemently dispute Kosovo’s independent status and, while FIFA may laughably insist politics has no place in sport, both Serbia and their backers in Moscow are likely to do whatever they can to deny Kosovo playing international football.
Unfortunately for the Kosovans and the Northern Cypriots, UEFA’s own membership criteria do this easily enough. To be a member of UEFA, potential new members have to be recognised as a country by the UN.
This rule was brought in as the result of an attempt to join UEFA and FIFA in the late 1990s by the UK colony of Gibraltar.
In the 1980s and 1990s, UEFA saw a flood of new entrants as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke up. With more money coming into the game, smaller nations that were UEFA members but did not enter qualifying competitions, such as Liechtenstein, found membership now lucrative enough to start fielding a team.
When the semi-autonomous Danish controlled colony of the Faroe Islands joined in 1988, Gibraltar decided to follow the same route.
Overseas clubs used to regularly visit the UK colony for friendly matches until the 1950s, when Gibraltar found itself increasingly isolated by hostile Spanish politicians eager to reclaim the Rock.
This gradually eased over time and Gibraltarian footballers increasingly began playing across the border in Spain and football on the Rock was in danger of dying. To prevent this, the Gibraltar Football Association (GFA) decided to emulate another non-country in the Faroes and join UEFA and FIFA.
The GFA had not counted on Spain though and the Spanish football federation pledged to pull out every national and club team out of UEFA and FIFA competitions if Gibraltar were allowed in.
To prevent this calamity – imagine the Champions League without Barcelona or Real Madrid? – UEFA simply changed the rules.
All national associations need first to be a member of a regional confederation such as UEFA or Oceania before graduating to full FIFA membership and the guaranteed U$1 million every four years that provides.
UEFA decided that all new members need to be UN members and this conveniently kept Gibraltar out.
The GFA appealed the case three times to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) – the game’s ultimate arbiter – before their membership application finally went to a UEFA congress for a vote in January 2007.
Montengro were joyfully waived in but of UEFA’s 52 existing members, only three voted for Gibraltar. Representatives of England, Scotland and Wales all raised their hands in support but there no help from Northern Ireland.
GFA president Joe Nunez says: “This is the best example of politics in sport. No-one has ever raised any sporting objections to our application.”
Gibraltar are back at CAS looking for legal expenses but FIFA have already found their own excuse for barring the Rock’s footballers should they manage to elbow their way into UEFA.
FIFA has decreed that as the colony’s only football stadium, the 3,000-seat Victoria Stadium, is on land between the Spanish town of La Linea and the colony that remains disputed more than 200 years after the UK took hold of Gibraltar, then it cannot host international football.
Bizarrely, the stadium has a FIFA accredited artificial surface that sits on the same strip of land that is also home to the colony’s airport, which last year started receiving international flights from Spain. That sort of reasoning is how FIFA manages to exclude politically sensitive members or ‘nations’ that the world body just cannot cope with.
The football association on the African island of Zanzibar dates back more than 80 years. In the early 1960s, Zanzibar and the East African Republic of Tanganyika united to form Tanzania but the Zanzibaris continued to play as a national team in the regional Council of East & Central Africa Football Association’s annual cup against the likes of Malawi and Uganda.
Zanzibar has received more autonomy from Tanzania in recent years and has its own parliament and president but not independence. The Zanzibar Football Association is an associate member of the regional FIFA body, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and in 2005 applied to join FIFA with CAF’s blessing.
This application was rejected and one of the reasons given by FIFA was that teams from Zanzibar could get the ferry and play in Tanzania.
Abdulghang Himin Msoma, chairman of the Zanzibar National Sports Council, said: “We cannot play in a league by ferry, that is a very unfortunate reason. That is not a reason at all.”
Admitting places that are not really countries might seem absurd but over the years, FIFA has admitted a host of places just like that.
Not just the UK’s four Home Nations, whose membership is a historic anomaly, but places like Palestine – a FIFA member since 1994 – and, to the chagrin of Gibraltar, a swathe of colonies from Tahiti and New Caledonia to Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
FIFA’s entry criteria is membership of a regional confederation and the more woolly ‘recognition by the international community’ and this has let in 23 associations that are not members of the United Nations.
FIFA’s six regional confederations also have another half a dozen associate members, such as French Guyana in the CONCACAF region covering North and Central American and the Caribbean, and Niue Island in the Ocean region.
That is nearly 30 places playing countries as ‘nations’ when to most people they are anything but. Whether that membership list is ever swelled by the Turkish people of Northern Cyprus or the Kosovans remains to be seen.

THE ‘NATIONAL TEAMS’ THAT FIFA FORGOT

Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands – When a US soccer Dad went to work on this isolated group of islands most famous as scene of bitter World War two battles, he tried to find a match for his teenage son and ended up starting a national team

The Channel Islands – Before New Labour came to power, Jersey and Guernsey probably had more autonomy than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland and are looking to take that independence onto the international football stage

The Falkland Islands – Has a four-team league but opposition from Argentina means that the South Atlantic islanders only outings are sporadic appearances in the football tournament of the bi-annual Island Games, a sort of mini-Olympics for islands

Greenland – Sitting on the top of the world, Greenland is, like the Faroe Islands, part of the Danish Commonwealth but politics has so far stopped the Greenlanders emulating the Faroese and joining UEFA and FIFA

Gibraltar – Spain and the UK have been at odds over the colony for two centuries and Spanish opposition has so far prevented the Gibraltarians joining UEFA and FIFA

Monaco – Nothing to stop the tiny Mediterranean principality joining UEFA but doing that might mean the only Monegasque club, former Champions League finalists AS Monaco, might have to leave the French league, which has so far scuppered the national team’s ambitions

Occitania – A team representing speakers of the medieval romance language, which is still spoken in France, Monaco and Spain. If you can speak Occitan, you can play regardless of where you come from

The Sami – a team drawn from the Sami tribe of Scandinavia, whose members – more commonly known as Lapps – are scattered across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia

Tibet – A team drawn from the Tibetan Diaspora, mostly in India and Nepal, which tries to play matches across the world despite massive opposition from China

Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus – top half of Mediterranean island that was invaded by Turkey and declared itself a state in 1983. Unfortunately, no-one also noticed

Zanzibar – Played football since 1924 only for the African island to join with Tanganyika and become Tanzania in 1960 but recent reforms have seen a push for greater autonomy on the football field.

*‘Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot’ by Steve Menary is published by Know The Score Books. The book does not have an Australian distributor at present and can be bought by contacting the author through the website http://outcasts-book.blogspot.com

Football book of the year award

I didn't win at the National Book Awards but the judges did say that any of the six books in the football book of the year award, including Outcasts!, could have won the award in that category.

The winner was Duncan Hamilton for Provided You Don't Kiss Me and Sir Bobby Charlton was second with the first half of his memoirs. Well done to both.

The media coverage of Outcasts! is drawing to a close although I did an interview for the student magazine Hullfire. but a couple of TV production companies have shown interest in Outcasts! and if anything definite happens, I will post details on the website.

In a few months time, I will also try a write an epilogue about what happened next to the teams in the book on this blog.

In the meantime, anyone interested in the subject matter will be able to read about subjects like Gibraltar's UK tour in May, the Europeada 2008 tournament, the second Viva World Cup, the game in St Helena and other Non-FIFA football in my regular slot in World Soccer magazine.

Overseas Coverage

Outcasts has received some good coverage overseas including Placar magazine in Brazil, Politiken newspaper in Denmark, Seracittà in Italy, So Foot in France, Sermitsiaq in Greenland and the Saipan Tribune in North Marianas.

I did an interview with Caprisport on Italian TV, the book has been reviewed on US blog cultureofsoccer and I was interviewed on the same site. The book has also been covered in Kosovo.

Many of the reviews are not in English but below is a translation of an article on Outcasts! from Swiss newspaper Woz. The original in Swiss German can be viewed here

Greenland vs. Tibet by Pascal Claude (translated by Ute Gundacker)

The Danish footballer Michael Nybrandt rides with his bicycle through Tibet. One night, he dreams that Tibet has his own football team. The dream is haunting him. Back in Copenhagen, Nybrandt graduates a course in an economy school. The school advises him to take hazards but be in balance with your body and soul, content and shape/form. Nybrandt remembers his dream. Through the Tibetan exile community he tries to find contacts to people, who are interested in football.
On the 30 June 2001 the Tibetan national team plays against Greenland, wearing Danish tricots by the sporting goods producer Hummel. Tibet looses in Copenhagen in front of 5.000 bystanders one to four. Hummel sells after that thousands of Tibetan tricots. This story can be read in Steve Menarys book 'Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot'.
Menary went on to a journey through the world for his book, going from Lapland to Gibraltar and from Guernsey to Tahiti. On more than 200 pages he tells about football teams who feel skipped by FIFA, about organisations from outcasts and from oil platforms who want to be members of these organisations.Menary writes about the criteria of the FIFA , why the Danish Faroe Islands are FIFA countries but not the Danish Greenland. About the differences between FIFA-Palestine and Not-FIFA-Tibet.
What's the difference? And what is the difference between the 192 Uno states and the 207 FIFA ones? This book gives revealing answers, and because of the precise collection of numbers and facts, it has lexical value, with a good sense of humour. In the chapter about Tibet, Menary mentions also the Wild Cup at St. Pauli in spring 2006. There the outcasts met for a little WM. Thanks to the best Tibetan player Dorjee Tsawa, the Tibetan national team was a strong one. The Swiss Tsawa, pro at St.Gallen, Zurich, Bellinzona, Xamax and Schaffhausen and now helps in the junior program of FCZ, played for the Wild Cup his first international match for Tibet. "I just wanted to play for Greenland, but it was in the season and therefore, I couldn't take part in it," he tells on the phone.
Although zero scores and a goal rapport from zero to twelve at the games in Hamburg, he has this one in good memories: "We were a conglomerate team, my brother and I, two amateurs from Zurich, one from the USA, the rest from India and Nepal. The Wild Cup was brilliant organised. The moment they played our hymn, was really emotional. Definitely I want to play more games for Tibet."
Wherever Tibet plays as a national team, there is a note of protest by the Chinese embassy. For Tsawas rear gunner Karma Samdup the main reason why the Tibetan national team should play as often as possible. "I like the thought that the Chinese embassy has to deal with us", he says in 'Outcasts!'. Tsawa has the same opinion: "It is better to get the attention by sport, than only by demonstrating. Therefore I support the Olympic team of Tibet. They knew from the first beginning that they wouldn't have a chance to take part, but they stand in public."
Tsawa doesn't have thoughts about sanctions from the side of FIFA, who threatens the Danish clubs with punishment 2001, if they make their stadiums available for Tibet. "Our many stateless, who defeat the Chinese pass and can't enter any county," he says, "that's the problem.