Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot

Greenland excerpt

2012-01-26T16:42:00.003Z

Two excerpts from Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot have now been been published online.

A section from the chapter on Greenland has recently been published on InBedWithMaradona.com, while another excerpt on football in the Northern Cyprus can be read at PlayTheGame.org.

Kosovo update

2011-12-19T09:31:00.003Z

UEFA’s executive committee will discuss Kosovo’s application to play international friendlies at a meeting between January 25-25.

Earlier this year, FIFA’s own ExCo rejected yet another application from the Football Federation of Kosovo to play international friendlies, leaving the FFK in international limbo as the country has not yet secured the official recognition from the United Nations that is needed to secure membership of the world body.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has sicne written to the president of the FFK, Fadil Vokrri, to explain that Kosovo’s attempt to play international friendlies would be discussed at the world body’s meeting in Tokyo last week.

Although a decision was again deferred by FIFA in Tokyo, Blatter has now asked UEFA to consider the application.

The FFK needs to join the European body before then going on to try for FIFA membership but UEFA president Michel Platini has consistently stated that only when Kosovo secures UN recognition will membership be allowed.

Zanzibar's season ends?

2011-12-06T14:30:00.006Z

The story also appears at InBedWithMaradona.com

Defeat in the quarter-finals of the Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (CECAFA) Cup leaves most of Zanzibar’s footballers with little to look forward to over the rest of this season.

Zanzibar qualified for the quarter-finals as the best third-placed team in group B after losing 2-1 to Uganda, drawing 0-0 with Burundi and crushing Somalia 3-0 and were drawing 1-1 with Rwanda in the quarter-finals until a goal two minutes from time by Meddie Kagere ended their CECAFA hopes.

The handful of Zanzibar players in the Tanzania squad for the 2014 World Cup qualifiers can look forward to qualifiers with Ivory Coast, Gambia and Morocco after the Taifa Stars squeaked past Chad in the pre-qualifiers.

For those Zanzibar players heading back from Tanzania across Dar es Salaam Bay there international schedule is far less certain.

The Zanzibar Football Association was formed in 1925 and the African island regularly played internationals but since joining with Tanganyika to form Tanzania half a century ago, the ZFA has been side-lined. In 1964, the Tanzania Football Federation joined FIFA and ever since the ZFA have been left feeding off whatever scraps the TFF is willing to hand out.

The situation is so bad that in 2002, Zanzibar broke away from the TFF and tried to join FIFA. In 2005, the application failed without the world body even hearing from anyone at the ZFA in person. After being snubbed by FIFA, the ZFA re-joined the TFF but the situation continued to deteriorate.

“It’s true that they are very badly treated by the TFF,” says Stewart Hall, a former manager of Zanzibar’s national side, who returned briefly this year only to depart just before the CECAFA Cup and be replaced by the Egyptian Abdelfatah Abbas.

Hall, who also coached the youth side at Birmingham City and the St Vincent and the Grenadines national side, adds: “The main problem with the national team is the lack of sponsorship, which means they struggle to play games at any level. People have tried to attract [sponsorship] but [have] failed miserably.”

This summer, members of parliament from Zanzibar brought up the issue in Tanzania’s parliament, asking where was the ZFA’s share of the U$D 250,000 a year that the TFF receives for football in both places from the world body’s financial assistance programme.

With no sign of any resolution, the ZFA tried to join FIFA again this year. FIFA guidance on new members in 2010 produced three categories from independent countries to non-independent territories and politically sensitive cases. Zanzibar was categorised as a non-independent country and not a priority in terms of help.

Yet again, Zanzibar were rebuffed. “As Zanzibar does not fulfil the basic condition of being a country recognized by the international community they were informed on 21 June 2011 that their request had been rejected accordingly,” explains FIFA.

“The FIFA proposal was I think led by government but there was upcoming elections in politics and in the ZFA so both parties were trying to gain popularity,” adds Hall.

For Ally Saleh, a Zanzibar-based football agent who helped draw up the second application to FIFA, the world body’s rejection smacks of double standards.

He explains: “It is very important for FIFA to understand the internal setup in Tanzania where the Union is governed by what is known as Articles of Union which recognises only 22 items specifically approved by the Constitution to be Union Matters. Sport is not one of them as such each side deals with it separately and with full autonomy.”

All this leaves Zanzibar’s players facing an iniquitous future. Zanzibar’s clubs can take part in the qualifiers for the African Champions League but these ventures are often short-lived. The five-tier club game, whose attendances have been hammered by satellite screening of the English Premier League, is low standard. For aspiring footballers in Zanzibar there is little to provide motivation.

“The football in the Zanzibar Premier League is nothing better than semi-pro with the players getting the same salary as a waiter in one of the many beach resorts,” says Hall. “The league [was] completed without a sponsor; no-one will invest because of previous discrepancies.”

With a population of more than one million people, there are also plenty of footballers and, according to Stewart Hall, plenty of ability but to pursue a meaningful professional career involves relocating to Tanzania and that is not always easy.

Hall adds: “There is talent in the islands, the boys learn their football on beaches and awful pitches and therefore are technically competent. They are Muslim and therefore do not drink, smoke or chase women and are very easy to work with.

“The salaries in Tanzania are 3-4 times more than in Zanzibar [but] there is a big brother, little brother relationship between the two countries, and the mainland people generally look down on the islanders.”

Hall was only in charge of Zanzibar for half a dozen matches before leaving to work in Tanzania’s Vodacom Premier League for title chasing Azam FC, which is owned by a company from Zanzibar. Since moving to Azam, Hall has signed eight of Zanzibar’s national side.

He explains: “The relationship between the Zanzibar players and Azam was totally formed by myself. I was looking for new players and the Zanzibaris I signed were considerably better than the players I released. It was in no way a club initiative, although the boss does look to help Zanzibari football when he has chance.”

Three of those players signed by Hall have gone on to play for Tanzania’s national side, while Abdi Khassim – another Zanzibari to make the Tanzanian side - has gone even further afield. Often known as Babi, Khassim is playing in the Vietnamese top flight for Dong Tam Long An.

Khassim is Zanzibar’s captain but the struggling VDQG Eximbank side refused to release him for the 2011 CECAFA Cup. Had the ZFA been in FIFA, like all the other sides in the CECAFA Cup, then Zanzibar might have had some leverage. Instead, like their footballers they are left to swim against the tide.

Gibraltar update

2011-11-25T14:36:00.003Z

Gibraltar's players celebrate on the pitch at the Victoria Stadium after beating England C

Gibraltar beat England C - a team of players from clubs outside the Football League - 3-1 last week.

An update on football in Gibraltar and the Gibraltar Football Association's appeal against its exclusion from UEFA is on the latest edition of BBC World Service's World Football show.

Guernsey & Jersey: neighbours but world's apart in football strategy

2011-11-19T20:52:00.004Z

This article also appeared at InBedWithMaradona.com

Guernsey’s entry into the English football pyramid has produced some early success but don’t expect Jersey to try and emulate their Channel Island neighbours.

The first two home fixtures for the newly formed Guernsey FC (GFC) in Combined Counties Division One produced emphatic wins – 5-0 over Knaphill, 3-0 over Warlingham – with both games watched by nearly 1,500 fans at Footes Lane.

Although players with Football League experience such as Chris Tardiff and Ryan-Zico Black are playing for Guernsey, both are Channel Islanders and the side is very much an attempt to provide regular football for the island’s local players that is made possible by sponsorship from Sportingbet rumoured to be worth around £250,000.

Jersey have ambitious plans too, but these involve the island pursuing a higher grade of football not at club level but internationally. There are seven teams in Guernsey’s main competition, the FNB Priaulx League, but 19 clubs are affiliated to the Jersey Football Association (JFA), whose senior members believe that following their neighbour route into the mainland pyramid would fundamentally weaken their game at a grass-roots level. GFC is not the Guernsey Football Association but a new club; a misconception not helped by former GFA president Mark Le Tissier being briefly involved in both before leaving to focus on the new club side.

To pursue a similar plan in Jersey, members of the JFA would need to quit to form or new club, or an existing senior club, such as First Tower or Jersey Scottish, would need to join the English pyramid. So far, both options have been rejected. Instead, over the past five years the JFA has been pursuing a ‘meaningful’ games programme for their national side. Premier League reserve sides, such as Blackburn and Sunderland, have flown over for games, while at youth level international sides from the other Home Nations are regular visitors but Jersey’s attempts to join the wider international arena have been stymied.

Only places recognised by the United Nations are able to join UEFA – a move designed to placate Spain, who threatened to quit international football if an application to join the European body by Gibraltar during the 1990s was approved. The change in UEFA statutes was not retrospective, allowing the four Home Nations to retain their historic international status, but has succeeded in keeping out other international aspirants, such as the Gibraltarians, Kosovo, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – and Jersey.

Jersey has a population of 87,400 – roughly double that of FIFA members Andorra, the Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein and San Marino - and while former England international Graeme Le Saux is their biggest name, there are significantly more of his ‘countrymen’ playing professionally than there are Andorrans or Sammarinese.

Brett Pittman features in the Championship for Bristol City as a striker, while Peter Vincenti and Curtis Guthrie both play in League Two at Aldershot and Accrington Stanley respectively.

Jack Boyle did not make the grade at Southampton, but Marco Zocchi was offered a pro contract at Bournemouth last year and Michael Weir – son of JFA president Ricky – recently signed a two-year contract with Portuguese first division side CD Nacional after an impressive year on loan last season at AD Camacha.

All these are younger players but, despite all this evidence that the JFA’s strategy is working, as a British Crown Dependency the island remains in international limbo. Jersey has as much independence as the four Home Nations – probably more in terms of taxation – but will never meet the UN’s membership criteria.

In 2007, the JFA wrote to Michel Platini and the UEFA president responded, confirming that there could be no exceptions to their statutes: Jersey’s international ambitions were seemingly stifled.

In January of 2008, outgoing Football Association head Geoff Thompson visited the island and took up Jersey’s cause. His mandate at the FA was gone, but Thompson was also a FIFA vice president and took up Jersey’s case.

Later that year, Jersey hosted an international tournament – of sorts – staging a three-team event with Madeira and Gibraltar and Thompson subsequently persuaded FIFA to set up a Small Nations working group to try and help non-controversial places stuck in limbo. This lobbying culminated in Thompson returning to the island with Urs Kluser, development director for FIFA’s ‘member associations and development division’, in April 2010. The visit was the third and final leg of Kluser’s expedition that had also taken in the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu and Sint Maarten - a Dutch administered territory that occupies half of the Caribbean island of Saint Marten.

But there was no breakthrough for Jersey and a double whammy followed: Kluser left FIFA last September and Jersey’s other main ally, Geoff Thompson, departed earlier this year. The international arena seemed beyond Jersey and that was seemingly confirmed by Guernsey’s move into club football – a move that could even endanger the historic annual Muratti Vase between the Channel Islands as this season’s game is just days before the end of the Combined Counties season.

The Muratti apart, Jersey’s main ‘international’ outlet is the football tournament at the bi-annual Island Games. Two years ago, Jersey won the title for a record third time beating the hosts Åland 2-1 but lost their title this year, going down at the semi-final stage in the Isle of Wight.

The JFA have not given up though and plans are being formulated to stage an 'International Challenge Shield' next June in Gibraltar that would feature these two sides, the Isle of Man and – depending on club commitments – Guernsey. All four sides are, like many French territories, stuck in international limbo but the likes of Guadeloupe and Mayotte do get to play in the bi-annual Coupe de l’Outre Mer.

Every two years, the Fédération Française de Football spend €900,000 staging the Overseas Cup for French territories, while the Dutch FA is helping organise the annual ABCS Cup for Dutch speaking countries and colonies. Could the Shield perhaps be the start of something bigger for those remnants of the British Empire that also need an international leg-up?

Kosovo still left out in the cold

2011-10-31T20:20:00.004Z

This story also appeared at InBedWithMaradona.com

The recent meeting of FIFA’s executive committee focused mainly on how Sepp Blatter planned to reinvigorate his tattered world body and leave a legacy untainted by corruption and governance problems.

Down among the footnotes was another decision taken by FIFA’s ExCo that yet again crushed Kosovo’s nascent hopes of joining the game’s international ranks.

The Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) has been unable to join FIFA as their country has not been allowed into the United Nations (UN).

The FFK did persuade FIFA to include Kosovars in the new Transfer Matching System (TMS) that regulates international transfers. Aimed at clamping down on money laundering, TMS started last season and extending the system to include the FFK meant that Kosovan clubs would no longer lose players to foreign clubs without receiving a transfer fee.

That is the upside. The downside is that since Kosovo was included in TMS, no Kosovan players have been transferred overseas. That may change, but FIFA’s refusal to extend its de facto recognition of the FFK past the TMS system looks unlikely to change with UEFA doing nothing to help the isolated Kosovans.

The Serbs oppose any recognition of Kosovo and their representatives did not even turn up at 2009 talks aimed at breaking the impasse, organised not by UEFA – seemingly the obvious mediators – but by FIFA.

At least the world body was trying to find a solution. UEFA president Michel Platini choe a visit to Belgrade to re-iterate his stance that only when Kosovo is recognised by the UN will acceptance into the European elite be allowed.

Platini is simply delaying the inevitable and showing little sympathy for the FFK, which gets by on not much more than £300,000 a year.

This season for the first time the FFK managed to sell TV rights to matches in the Kosovan Superliga, providing a small fillip for the fledgling body and its members. A more substantial bonus would come from joining FIFA, which would provide additional funding of U$D 250,000 a year through its financial assistance programme.

The FFK know that getting into FIFA is a longer game and had not even asked for membership but instead asked the recent ExCo meeting in Zurich to let Kosovo play international friendlies.

The answer was ‘no’. A more positive response would have put players like Lazio’s Lorik Cana and former West Ham midfielder Valon Behrami – now Also in Serie A with Fiorentina – in a difficult position.

Denied a chance to play at international level for their homeland, Kosovans have to find a new home. Cana and Behrami moved to Albania and Switzerland as children as their parents fled the war back home.

FIFA have decreed that if Kosovo win recognition, Kosovars can abandon their adopted countries and turn out for the land of their birth. Albania and Switzerland, whose teenage prodigy Xherdan Shaqiri is also a Kosovar, could suffer badly from Kosovan recognition by FIFA.

Playing friendlies for Kosovo may have even proved preferable for older players such as Cana or Behrami, who - with neither Albania nor Switzerland going to Euro 2012 – now have no competitive internationals for nearly a year.

As UEFA and FIFA sit Canute-like in their Zurich thrones, a solution may come from the former Yugoslav republic’s politicians.

Once more than half of the UN’s 192 members have recognised Kosovo, the country’s application can go to a vote that, for all the lobbying of Serbia and its influential ally Russia, simply requires a majority to be passed.

Most of western Europe and the United States have long recognised Kosovo. Kuwait and Ivory Coast recently swelled those ranks and 85 countries have formal relations with Kosovo. Once that number reaches 96, the intransigence of FIFA and UEFA may be overcome. In the meantime, Kosovo’s footballers will stay in limbo.

FIFA's newest member?

2011-09-20T10:56:00.006+01:00

Kiribati (in red) in action at the 2011 SPG ©NC2011

This story also appeared at InBedWithMaradona.com and World Soccer

As a membership application to join FIFA, Kiribati’s performance at this month’s Pacific Games must rank a dismal failure.

The Pacific islands have been trying to join FIFA for some time and a performance in New Caledonia that included not one but two 17-1 defeats seems unlikely to help a much-delayed application that finally appeared to be showing signs of succeeding.

Back in 2007, FIFA said that Kiribati was “in the formal process of admission but we expect them to withdraw their request in the coming months.” Ioteba Redfern, the president of the Kiribati Islands Football Association (KIFA), quickly denied any volte face but when Kiribati failed to take part in the 2007 Pacific Games football tournament, the membership bid trailed off. There was little sign of any subsequent progress until, at the behest of former Football Association chairman Geoff Thompson, FIFA set up a small nations working group to look into the cases of potential members. The working group categorised potential members into three groups from independent states to politically sensitive applicants.

As an independent state recognised by the United Nations, Kiribati was - according to the group – a “priority” and FIFA says that the KIFA application is the only one received from this most eligible group of just eight potential members. At a group meeting on October 27 2010, Kiribati’s application was discussed but some documents were missing. Thompson suggested requesting the missing documents and asking a representative of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) to visit Kiribati. “Otherwise,” says the notes, “FIFA would decide on the application without full knowledge of the situation.”

Prior to this meeting, Thompson and another FIFA official Urs Kluser carried out visits to three other potential members, taking in trips to Jersey, the Dutch territory of Sint Maarten and another tiny Pacific island chain in Tuvalu. Kiribati was snubbed and when first Kluser then Thompson left FIFA, an application that could provide U$D 250,000 in funding a year for the disparate island group seemed in danger. So Ioteba Redfern jetted into Switzerland in June this year to advance Kiribati’s case. His lobbying proved successful and FIFA plans a trip to Kiribati in conjunction with the OFC later this month (September). Then, says the world body, the “matter will be then dealt with by the Associations Committee in October 2011.”

With the agenda set, the 2011 Pacific Games were a chance for FIFA’s potentially newest member to show what could be achieved on the pitch. The I-Kiribati – as the islanders are known – first entered the Pacific Games in 1979, losing 13-0 to Papua New Guinea and 24-0 to Fiji. Kiribati’s only other appearance in a tournament with a five decade history was 2003, when losses included a 12-0 defeat to Fiji and an 18-0 savaging by Vanuatu.

With the FIFA application finally moving forward, New Caledonia 2011 was a new dawn and an opening 9-0 defeat to Fiji was an improvement. The Cook Islands edged past the I-Kiribati 2-0 and in their next match, Karotu Bakaae even scored; the problem was the 17 goals that went past Kiribati’s keeper Tiion Miika. Miika was dropped. Tongalua Akori took over in goal for the final group game against Tahiti and another new face drafted into the starting XI, Erene Bakineti, even scored but Akori also let in 17 goals.

Having started so promisingly, Kiribati fell apart and their performance provided a stark and embarrassing contrast to the effort by neighbours Tuvalu. Although beaten 5-1 by Vanuatu, 6-1 by the Solomon Islands and 8-0 by the hosts, Tuvalu took points off two full FIFA members, thrashing American Samoa 4-0 and drawing 1-1 with Guam.

Perhaps Kiribati’s performance in New Caledonia will make FIFA realise the KIFA really need some help? Or maybe the woeful showing will convince FIFA that its search for a 209th member might be better focused on Kiribati’s more adept neighbours Tuvalu, leaving the I-Kiribati stuck on the touchlines for even longer?

CAS rules in favour of Gibraltar

2011-09-05T14:57:00.008+01:00

Gibraltar fans watch their national team at the 2011 Island Games football tournament

This article was previously published at PlayTheGame.org

FIFA’s attempts to help places left outside the world body are set to be hit by a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling this week that has upheld Gibraltar’s controversial attempt to join the international game.

Documents obtained by Play the Game show that FIFA has ranked places outside the world body in three categories with Gibraltar amongst the lowest priority but CAS has ruled that UEFA must now do everything in its power to let the British colony into the European body by the 2012 Congress in Turkey next June.

The ruling could have major repercussions at FIFA as world and European champions Spain have previously threatened to quit all international football if Gibraltar is allowed to join UEFA and play internationals.

UEFA change of rules
Neither CAS nor the Gibraltar Football Association (GFA) would comment but UEFA, which has 30 days to appeal the ruling, told Play the Game: “UEFA has received the CAS decision on the Gibraltar case and while reviewing it, took note that it does not grant immediate membership. UEFA is now studying its implications and possible next steps.”

The GFA applied to join UEFA in 1999 but shortly after, the European body changed its membership criteria so that all new members had to be recognized as countries by the United Nations.

This move was not made retrospective, allowing the four British Home Nations and the Faroe Islands to retain membership, and used to reject Gibraltar and bar subsequent new applicants such as Greenland and Kosovo.

Because the change was made after their application, the GFA went to CAS in 2006 and secured a ruling upholding their application but when Gibraltar’s potential membership went to a UEFA vote, the influential Spanish FIFA executive committee member Angel Maria Vilar Llona urged members to reject the colony. Of UEFA’s then 52 members, only England, Scotland and Wales supported Gibraltar.

FIFA’s list of priority
Now European football is likely to face yet another contentious vote supporting a place that FIFA’s own small nations working group believes merits the least attention and describes as ‘politically sensitive’ in the committee notes.

The group, which was chaired by former English FA President Geoff Thompson and led by Urs Kluser, met three times before outlining its aims and objectives at a world body meeting last October, which PTG has secured the notes for.

Kluser went on three missions to try and understand the problems faced by places left outside FIFA and visited the Pacific state of Tuvalu, the Dutch Caribbean territory of Sint Maarten and the British dependency of Jersey.

In addition to ranking places in order of priority from independent nations to politically sensitive cases, the notes, which FIFA has confirmed, read:

The priority should go to the first category, while assistance for the non-independent territories (second category) could be considered only if channelled through their parent Member Association and/or confederation. FIFA must make sure that this would not mean a decrease in the assistance already provided by the MA and confederation
To stress clearly that any assistance provided by FIFA does not mean political recognition of the applicant and should not be considered as a first step towards becoming a FIFA member
Assistance should not include FAP or Goal projects

The latter is controversial as Greenland and French Guiana – a CONCACAF associate but not recognised by FIFA – have both received funding for Goal projects through the Danish and French federations respectively.

Working group on hold
FIFA president Sepp Blatter did visit Greenland last October but Kluser left the world body last year and with Thompson stepping down earlier this year, the activities of the working group have – according to insiders – ground to a halt.

At the 2010 meeting Costakis Koutsokoumnis, President of the Cyprus FA, which opposes attempts by the largely unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to play internationals, insisted that a “mechanism” be found to define politically sensitive cases. The notes show Thompson replying that this would be “decided on a case-by-case basis with the option of calling upon experts for help.”

As a result, the group’s next meeting scheduled for March 1 2011 did not take place and there is little evidence of FIFA, which had been engulfed by corruption problems for most of this year, making any attempt to engage with any of the identified as potential members.

No news from FIFA
Sources in Sint Maarten told Play the Game there had been no contact with FIFA since Kluser’s visit in 2010 and described the state of football on the Caribbean island as a “mess.” Recent visitors to Palau – another country cited by FIFA as needing help and eligible to join – reported no evidence of organised football activity at all and a member of the Monegasque Football Federation told Play the Game: “Concerning FIFA, we do not have any contact with them.”

Tuvalu will play in the football tournament at this month’s South Pacific Games in New Caledonia, along with Kiribati, which had applied to join FIFA. This application was discussed at last year’s meeting and a decision made to visit the Pacific islands.

That did not happen and the Kiribati FA had to visit FIFA’s Zurich HQ on June 17 to start a dialogue, which is now finally expected to involve an official visit to the islands next month.

The leisurely pace of the FIFA group, which some aspiring members had hoped would organise some form of competition, is also evident in another application from the Zanzibar FA, whose application was sent to Switzerland on August 27 2010. This was discussed and rejected on October 27 2010 but the Zanzibar FA only found out last week about the latest rejection, which follows another snub from FIFA in 2005.

“This [latest] request was examined by the Associations Committee in March 2011 and by the FIFA Executive Committee meeting,” says FIFA in response. “As Zanzibar does not fulfil the basic condition of being a country recognized by the international community they were informed on 21 June 2011 that their request had been rejected accordingly.”

FIFA has allowed the Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) to join its transfer matching system to stop clubs in the former Yugoslav republic losing players without compensation, but will not accept the FFK as a member until Kosovo, which has been recognised by 81 countries across the world, is allowed into the UN.

This is unlikely for as long as Serbia’s ally Russia sits on the UN Security Council and an appeal earlier this year by the FFK to allow Kosovo to play international friendlies was rejected by FIFA.

“Why should they care about a small country like Kosovo when there is nothing in it for them,” says former Kosovo manager Edmond Rugova.

Relying on national associations
With little sign of help from FIFA, some places left isolated from the world game are increasingly relying on national associations at their mother country.

The Dutch FA trains coaches from its colonies and in 2008, the Fédération Française de Football staged the first Coupe de l’Outre Mer for French territories and overseas departments. Now a bi-annual tournament costing €900,000 to stage, this is the only competition open outside of their region to the likes of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion, which were all named in FIFA’s second tier of applicants.

The tournament is also open to those French dependents that have managed to join FIFA, such as Tahiti, a member since 1990, and New Caledonia, which was allowed to join in 2004 on the grounds that a vote for independence is scheduled for between 2014 and 2019.

In 2005, FIFA provided U$D 400,000 from its Goal scheme towards a U$D 907,000 artificial turf in the New Caledonian capital of Noumea and three years later covered the entire U$D 400,000 cost of extending a technical centre, again in Noumea. In Tahiti, FIFA also funded the whole cost of a U$D 400,000 technical centre at Pirae in Tahiti from Goal funds but many unaffiliated places outside the world body are increasingly left in limbo with no support.

“A lot of smaller nations fall into this Catch 22 situation - FIFA want to see so much before they give any help but there's no way to get to that point unless you already have some funding or people willing to work hard for free for a long time, which most places don't,” says Paul Watson, an Englishman who travelled to Pohnpei in Micronesia and organised a football league – an experience he chronicles in a book due out next year called Up Pohnpei (Profile 2011).

New Caledonia’s entry was cited by the Zanzibar FA in its latest application to join FIFA and has also been brought up by Guadeloupe.

Alain Soreze at the Ligue Guadeloupéenne de Football says: “We look (sic) the example of New Caledonia. But response [from the FFF] is Guadeloupe do not have the same political and administration statute like New Caledonia.”

For those British dependents aspiring to FIFA membership, there is only the football at the bi-annual Island Games football championship but Gibraltar, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Guernsey are hoping to stage a tournament next June, when the Mediterranean side could well have something off the pitch to celebrate too.

FIFA'S POTENTIAL NEW MEMBERS
Category one - independent states not in FIFA
Place	Region	Status
Kiribati	OFC	OFC associate
Marshall Islands	-	Not affiliated
Micronesia	AFC	EAFF associate
Monaco	UEFA	Not affiliated
Palau	-	Not affiliated
Tuvalu	OFC	OFC associate

Category two - Non-independent territories
Guadeloupe	CONCACAF	CONCACAF associate
Greenland	-	Not affiliated
Isle of Man	UEFA	FA member
Jersey	UEFA	FA member
Martinique	CONCACAF	CONCACAF associate
North Mariana	AFC	EAFF associate
Reunion	CAF	CAF associate
Sint Maarten	CONCACAF	CONCACAF associate
Zanzibar	CAF	CAF associate

Category three - politically sensitive
Catalonia	UEFA	-
Gibraltar	UEFA	-
South Ossetia	UEFA	-
Kosovo	UEFA	-
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus	UEFA	-
Source: FIFA

Falklands football

2011-08-15T08:37:00.005+01:00

The Falklands in action against Gotland at the 2011 Island Games

This story appeared earlier on InBedWithMaradona.com

Forget Fabio Capello, meet an international manager with real problems.

“It can’t go on,” sighs a dejected Richard Franks. The manager of the Falkland Isles’ team is sat in the dug-out at Oakfield FC, a team from a working class suburb of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. “What we need are a lot of games at this level. Before we came here, we’d only had one in the last two years.”

Franks has just overseen the Falklands’ final group game in the 2011 Island Games football tournament. A biennial mini-Olympics for islands, the football tournament offers the only competitive outing for the South Atlantic colony’s beleaguered players.

For the Falklands, which has a population of just 3,100, the tournament has gone from one disaster to another.

A handful of players went to the UK well before the Games for a holiday, leaving nine to travel out a week before the Games - only for the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano to erupt.

Swathes of southern hemisphere flights were cancelled. With the Ministry of Defence refusing to operate the ‘air-bridge’ – the name for the flights going from Mount Pleasant airfield in the Falklands, via Ascension Island to the UK – the team had no choice but to try and go via Chile.

A flight from Stanley had to stop off in Argentina. When the players got to Punta Arenas in Chile, they were delayed for a day before reaching Santiago. Most of the squad got on a Madrid flight to London but there were no seats for three players, who had to fly via the Peruvian capital of Lima.

The squad finally assembled a couple of days before the tournament began and played a hastily arranged friendly with Eastleigh, an ambitious local semi-professional side from the Blue Square South league.

The result was a 5-0 defeat but worse was a broken leg for Ian Betts, who was under consideration for the role of captain for the side’s three Group C fixtures on the Isle of Wight.

The opening fixture was against Guernsey, who will play in the Combined Counties League on the mainland in 2011/12 and have won the Island Games football tournament twice. The Falklands were only down 1-0 at half-time. That was progress. But the Channel Islanders, whose ranks boast former Football League professionals such as Chris Tardiff and Ryan Zico-Black, rattled in four goals without reply in the second half.

In the next game, a poor performance saw the Falklands overwhelmed 6-0 by the Isle of Man leaving only the fixture in Oakfield to restore some pride. Captain Bill Chater, a giant central defender, put in a titanic showing but their opponents, the Swedish island of Gotland, ran in six goals watched by a crowd of 200 or more that was boosted by an army of ground-hoppers.

Creditably, the Falklands refused to give up and Rafa Sotomayor got on the score-sheet for his adopted homeland, who could have added a second but had to settle for a 6-1 defeat.

The qualification rules in the tournament are more relaxed than FIFA’s, only requiring a one-year residency. The manager of the Falkland Isles Gift shop, Sotomayor was joined in the squad by two fellow Chileans, a chef, Carlos Fajardo, and Patricio Balladares, a waiter at the Malvina House Hotel.

The eclectic squad also included a Georgian, Zaza Elbakidze, and Adam Glanville, a veteran for the team, who was born on another remote British colony in the South Atlantic. Glanville is a veteran with the national team and can recall better times.

Not so long ago, football in the Falklands was booming. The spur was a short tour of Chile in 1997 led by Patrick Watts, the Islander who over the radio relayed the details of the Argentine invasion in 1982 until being forced to lay down his microphone at gun-point, the invaders having reached Stanley.

By the turn of the Millennium, five teams from Stanley, including one comprised solely of St Helenians, played in a league. In 2001 the national team entered the Island Games football tournament for the first time, where expectations were exceeded despite an inauspicious beginning.

The Falkland XI began their campaign in the Isle of Man began with a 9-0 thrashing from the hosts but results improved. Eventual winners Guernsey were restricted to a 3-0 win, Greenland went one better winning 4-0 but the Falklands finished on a high, routing the Orkneys 4-1.

Travel remains expensive with athletes expected to make a significant contribution to the cost and the Falklands’ footballers sat out the 2003 tournament in Guernsey but entered again in 2005, making the long-trek north to the Shetlands.

The Manxmen inflicted another 9-0 pasting, while the Shetlands beat the Falklanders 4-0 but the Finnish island of Åland won just 2-1. Then at the community centre in Whiteness, the team put in perhaps their greatest ever performance against Saarema. The Estonian island XI included Victor Alonen, who had 68 caps for Estonia, but goals from Eoin Anderson and a Martyn Clarke penalty produced what is still the biggest shock in Island Games football.

Clarke is a divisive figure in Falkland football, having controversially taken up the offer of a trial with Argentine giants Boca Juniors in 1996. Then just 16, he was partly the victim of a public-relations exercise that caused ructions back home and in 2002 left the Islands for the UK.

Clarke played for the team at the 2009 Island Games in Åland, where the Falklands lost all three games, but now in his thirties he was not considered for the Isle of Wight jaunt.

With Clarke gone and veterans such as Glanville and perhaps Chater nearing the end of their international footballing careers, a vacuum has opened up in Falkland football with few players coming though and the game is in crisis with only three teams left.

Sullivan Blue Sox, Kelper Stores and Sealed PR did not even manage to complete the last league programme and the Falklands might not send a side to the next Games in Bermuda in 2013.

For Kyle Biggs, who toiled tirelessly alongside his brother Daniel for the Falklands against Gotland, the reason is simple.

“There’s not as much interest in football as when we were kids,” says Biggs, only in his mid-20s. “Football is still the number one sport but people are going off to play cricket now they have money to spend.”

Despite plenty of British, Dutch and French colonies joining FIFA, the influence of Argentina makes that idea not worth entertaining for the Falklands’ footballers - but cricket is another story.

Again spurred by an earlier tour to Chile, the Falklands became an affiliate of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2007. Argentina abstained but in a sport dominated by Commonwealth countries that protest barely registered.

In 2010, the Falklands played in the inaugural ICC Americas Championship Division Four tournament in Mexico and even beat Costa Rica by 39 runs in a 50-over match. With international recognition comes sponsorship – and interest from the islands’ tiny population.

For Richard Franks, faced with increasing encroachment from cricket, there is only one solution to save the dwindling role of football on the islands – and that is a radical one.

His face red in the hot Isle of Wight sun, Franks explains: “The Air Bridge is sponsored by FIG [Falklands Islands Government] and I’ve been wondering if they might give us seats once a month or even every two months so we could come over here.

“That way we could get 20 games a season over here. We’ve got to do something, it’s the lack of games; something has to be done.”

Perhaps, like Guernsey, the Falklands too might find their way into the English pyramid? Quite how they would get teams back to Stanley for a home game is another story.

First win for North Mariana

2011-08-14T12:19:00.006+01:00

The Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands has won its first ever international match.

The game was only an U-15 game but the 2-1 victory last month over the former Portuguese colony of Macau in a youth tournament in Taiwan was fitting first ever-win.

The Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Thai communities on Saipan and some of the US citizens had played unorganized football on Saipan for years but the North Mariana Islands FA was only set up after a US lawyer, Peter Coleman, came to work on the main island of Saipan and set up a youth league to give his son a game.

The 14 islands – part of the United Nations trust territory in the Pacific but administered by the United States - first played internationally five years ago after invited being as guests to the 2006 U-14 East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) youth festival in Beijing (pictured).

Peter Coleman has since stepped aside but, driven by president Jerry Tan, NIMFA is now a member of the EAFF and an associate member of the Asian Football Confederation.

Island Games Photo Gallery

2011-08-14T11:10:00.006+01:00

The Isle of Wight repulse a Gibraltar attack at East Cowes

A gallery of images from the group stages of the 2011 NatWest Island Games can be found at InBedWithMaradona.

The photos feature matches involving Aland, Alderney, the Falklands, Gibraltar, Greenland, Gotland, the Isle of Wight, Minorca, Saarema and the Western Isles.

St Pierre et Miquelon

2011-08-14T10:40:00.009+01:00

The opening ceremony at the 2010 Coupe de l'Outre Mer

This article appeared earlier at InBedWithMaradona.com

The reach of the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) stretches far beyond the shores of North Western Europe.

As debut matches go, St Pierre et Miquelon’s first international did not augur well, ending in an 11-0 tanking, but the match could be the start of something bigger.

An archipelago of eight islands located off Canada’s eastern seaboard, St Pierre et Miquelon (SPM) is the last vestige of France’s one sprawling North American empire.

SPM might be a historical anomaly, but that status led to the islands’ FA being invited by the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) to play in the second edition of the bi-annual Coupe de l’Outre Mer.

The FFF started the competition – otherwise known as the Overseas Cup – in 2008 at the behest of Christian Karembeu, who was born in New Caledonia but won the World Cup with Les Bleus a decade earlier.

The aim of the Coupe de l’Outre Mer was to provide an outlet for French overseas departments or territories that are mostly unable to emulate Tahiti and New Caledonia and join FIFA.

French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique are all associate members at CONCACAF but prevented from taking the next step up by French politics. Those five sides plus the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte contested the first tournament in Paris. Two years later, a side drawn from St Pierre and Miquelon’s tiny 6,000 population also made the trip to Paris.

Money was not an issue as the FFF stumped up €900,000 to cover the cost of the now eight sides bringing 18 players and seven officials apiece to Paris from the Diaspora of the remaining French empire.

In his first international fixture, Yannick Lafonte’s SPM side faced holders Reunion in the first of a double-bill of group games at the Michel Hidalgo Stadium in Saint-Gratien, eastern Paris.

In an attempt to put the opposition off their guard, SPM sent the youngest players out for the warm up then switched to the first choice XI just before kick-off, but gamesmanship was never going to be enough.

That St Pierre and Miquelon’s ponderous defence was out of its depth was obvious early on, but brave goalkeeping from Gino Bonnieul and truly atrocious finishing from Reunion’s number nine Jean Michel Fontaine kept the score down to 2-0 at half-time.

Reunion were constantly offside in the first half and no better on the re-start. For 12 minutes, captain Stanislas Beck and his kept Reunion out but when Pascal N’Gongue stabbed home on 57 minutes, the game was literally up.

A defender, Beck had a dozen team-mates from his club side, AS Ilienne, keeping him company in Paris. SPM only has three teams and the Coupe de l’Outre Mer squad also included four players from AS Miquelonnaise and a brace from AS Saint-Perraise, the territory’s oldest club.

SPM initially overcame lack of quality by getting a foot into most tackles but in the second half, their opponents’ superior fitness prevailed. Reunion ran in eight more goals but for the SPAM FA’s phlegmatic secretary Herve Huet the result was of little concern.

“This is the first time we play in this competition, the first time in any official FFF game because we are such a small island,” says Huet with a nonchalant Gallic shrug. “I am very happy just to see our players here. Our level of play is very different to teams like Reunion. We only have 600 players.”

The bulk of the population live on St Pierre with 700 people on Miquelon and lack of players is not the only obstacle. Harsh winters mean the season only runs from June to September. “After that, it is not possible to play because of the weather is so cold,” adds Huet. “The snow arrives and it is not possible to play before April too because the field is frozen.”

In the long winter months, SPM’s players play futsal – the short-sided version of football popular in continental Europe – and the islanders have been entering a side in France’s National Futsal Cup since 2008.

In their next group game in the Coupe de l’Outre Mer, SPM were again only 2-0 down at half-time against French Guiana and only lost 7-0 but succumbed to 10-0 to Mayotte in their final group game. With 28 goals conceded and none scored, the 2010 Coupe de L’Outre Mer was not an auspicious start for SPM but Huet’s islanders plan to return.

GB United? Reviews

2011-08-14T10:35:00.006+01:00

'GB United? British Olympic football and the end of the amateur dream' has received some good press coverage including the following reviews:

"A fine book!" --The Guardian

"Menary carefully explains how amateurism or 'shamateurism' gradually became unacceptable in this country, with everyone being declared just 'players' in 1974. He recounts not only the sad decline of Vivian Woodward, a superb centre-forward and a member of the British team in 1908 and 1912, but also the exploits of Pegasus, who galvanised the amateur game in the early 1950s. It is a valuable contribution to football literature." -- The Olympian

"Excellent!" --InBedWithMaradona.com

"A fascinating insight into the trials and tribulations into what was, for many years, a murky world of under the counter payments." --Bob Bevan, the Non League Paper

"Delightful chronicle... an excellent addition to Olympic lore." --Journal of Olympic History

"Menary does an outstanding job. GB United? is a historical tome telling a story that has been forgotten and overlooked elsewhere. This story is as much about a class struggle in twentieth century Britain as anything else, but in this case it was a struggle that the ruling class were always going to lose. Those that ran the game at the start of the twentieth century may well look at modern football and wonder what on earth it has become, but GB United? tells a part of the story that is seldom looked at elsewhere with a keen eye for historical detail, a dry sense of humour and a mixture of disdain and respect for those that ended up shaping many of the paths that modern football would end up taking." --Twohundredpercent

"Excellent!" --Keir Radnedge, sportsfeatures.com

"Inspiring tales of those who considered the Games to be the ultimate make this a worthy read." --Four Four Two magazine

"Steve Menary brings to life the world of the amateur and highlights in a very real way the characters that were dominating the British Olympic team from 1900-1972. If you are a football fan and have any history with the amateur game, this is well worth a read." --Graham Neale, son of the 1948 GB captain Graham

"Well informed and lively ... a quality work." --Soccer History

"Thorough and interesting work." --When Saturday Comes

"One will find no better account of the complicated business that has been Great Britain's involvement in Olympic football." --Groundtastic

"Exemplary research, grasp of his material and eye for a quirky fact keep up the interest." --Independent on Sunday

Read the first Chapter of GB United

2010-12-04T15:06:00.008Z

The first chapter of my new book, GB United? British Olympic football and the end of the amateur dream, has been published exclusively by Play The Game.

Anyone interested can read it here.

New Book

2010-11-01T11:28:00.006Z

The London 2012 Olympic Games will see the return of a football team that the world has not seen for more than forty years.

Only in the Olympics have the four Home Nations of the UK managed to unite and a century after last winning the Olympic football tournament, the British side will return for London 2012.

GB United? British Olympic Football and the end of the Amateur Dream is the first and only book to tell the full story of the UK’s Olympic efforts – which saw the team
twice crowned world champions before petering out in the qualifiers for the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Now, four decades on the Olympic team is being revived as a one-off for London 2012 and the side will be one of the most talked about in world football.

GB United? author Steve Menary said, “The team for 2012 is supposed to be only English players but the British Olympic Association have not given up on the idea of a united team.

"With the tournament following directly after Euro 2012 and Fabio Capello being increasingly pressured to use younger players for the England team, there’s going to be a lot of strain on resources if England qualify for Poland and the Ukraine as the Olympics is an U-23 event, and there’s also still the issue of who the manager is going to be.”

Featuring scores of interviews with Olympic players, GB United? also traces the history of the amateur ethos of the game’s founders and how that credo died ofering up a long-lost world that contrasts starkly with today’s over-commercialised football industry, but still provides an essential insight to the problems facing the current Olympic team.

Examining the successes and failiures of previous managers of the Olympic team, including some of football’s leading names, such as Sir Matt Busby and Walter Winterbottom; while also featuring the leading amateur players, such as Vivian Woodward of Spurs and Chelsea, Bill Slater of Wolves and Jim Lewis, who won the league with Chelsea in 1955 while still an amateur – and wrote the book’s foreword.

Pohnpei record first win

2010-10-11T10:57:00.006+01:00

The national XI from the tiny Micronesian island of Pohnpei has won their competitive game after English coaches Paul Watson and Matthew Conrad led them to a commanding victory over club side Crushers on October 3 during a tour of Guam.

The world's youngest international manager Watson and assistant Conrad, both 26, took charge of Pohnpei in July 2009 and after 15 months of hard work, a young Pohnpeian squad travelled to Guam on tour to play their first competitive matches in over a decade thanks to a sponsorship deal with London-based cargo airline Coyne Airways.

In the first match of their four-game tour, Pohnpei lost 3-2 to club side Rovers 3-2 but they bounced back to thrash Crushers 7-1 at the Guam Football Association Complex in Dededo in front of a large crowd of Pohnpeian expats, who invaded the pitch at the final whistle to celebrate with the team.

Teenage strikers Ryan Johnson and Matthew Carlot scored two apeice, while gifted midfielder Nick Santiago, speedy wing-back Mike Selikar and giant defender Tom Mawi also hit the net for a team that has never received a penny of funding from football's governing body FIFA.

"It's just amazing how hard these lads have worked," said Watson, whose squad had an average age of just 22. "We have put them through 5.00 AM sessions before work as well as a tough gym routine, not to mention the hours spent on our waterlogged pitch at PICS Field."

On an island with an obesity rate of nearly 90%, Watson instigated strength and conditioning and nutritional programmes for his squad that was picked after last autumn's inaugural Pohnpei Premier League - a five-team league competition won by the local Island Pit-Bulls.

Pohnpei were beaten 2-0 by the Carpet Masters the day after their historic win and lost their final tour game 3-0 to a Guam side mainly featuring U-18 players but with five players above this age limit and three full internationals.

The hope is now that Pohnpei's success with aid the Federated States of Micronesia - Pohnpei and the neighbouring islands of Chuuk, Yap and Kosrae - in their bid to join the East Asian Football Federation, providing huge development grants and creating a long-term future for the game in the region.

Team captain Dilshan Senarathgoda is now set to take over the reins in Pohnpei while Watson plans to look for a football role in the UK or Europe and Conrad plans to make a documentary about the team's epic journey.

Strain at new regional federation

2010-10-07T13:05:00.009+01:00

A version of this story appeared in a recent edition of Soccer Business World

Tensions between the six national football associations in the Indian Ocean that have clubbed together to form a new international association are delaying plans for a regional tournament.

The federation comprises Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion and the Seychelles and a champion’s league featuring the top club sides from each territory should be staged before the end of 2010.

A tournament featuring the national sides from all six countries is also being planned. This will be staged regionally with the Comoros, Madagascar and Mayotte in Pool A and Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles in Pool B.

Although the club competition is highly likely to be staged this year, getting the regional version started will prove harder due to tensions between the six associations, which have very different political status. “Madagascar and Comoros are in FIFA and want all the power,” said the Mayotte manager Frederic Suflaj.

The Fédération Comorienne de Football representing the Comoros was accepted into FIFA five years ago, while the Fédération Malagasy de Football representing Madagascar has been a member of the world body since 1964 – the same year that Mauritius also joined FIFA.

The Seychelles Football Federation was welcomed into FIFA in 1986. All four are independent states, unlike Reunion and Mayotte, which cannot join the world body due to their political status.

Reunion is a French department, while Mayotte is a French territory. Reunion is an associate member of the Confederation of African Football and can enter clubs in CAF competitions but not a national selection in the World Cup qualifiers.

Like Reunion, Mayotte is affiliated to the Fédération Française de Football but only a French territory. Teams of local players from both islands were recently in Paris at the moment for Le Coupe de l’Outre Mer – otherwise known as the Overseas Cup – (pictured) which is an eight team, bi-annual tournament staged by the FFF for its overseas departments or territories.

Reunion, winners of the inaugaral tournament in 2008, reached the final again only to lose to Martinque on penalties, while Mayotte finished fourth behind Guadeloupe.

Pohnpei to tour Guam

2010-08-21T10:05:00.007+01:00

Coyne Airways have flown in with a sponsorship deal that will enable the Pohnpei State team to tour Guam from October 1 and 8.

A new Pohnpei shirt will be produced for the short tour bearing the Coyne Airways logo and the air cargo firm, which serves the Caspian, Middle East and Asia, will give updates on the team's progress at www.coyneair.com. "We are delighted to help the team fulfill their dream," said owner Larry Coyne. "We understand how distance and logistics can pose such a challenge to a remote island like Pohnpei and we are proud to be the ones to step in and help."

An 18-man squad has been named for the tour but only 15 players will make the journey. Dutch-born winger Yafeth Konings, who previously represented Indonesia, and SDA FC striker Matthew Carlot have joined a squad that will be trimmed on September 21.

The squad train twice weekly at 5.00 am on top of evening sessions at PICS Field, while friendlies are played against an Island All-Star XI made up of overseas players on Pohnpei but the state of the island’s only pitch is causing concern with injuries to several key State players.

Poor weather and an inefficient drainage system can cause flooding to a pitch often full of frogs. Divots – not frogs – have injured Pohnpei State players Roger Nakasone (pictured), Denson Fairfield and Brian Taylor but with Pohnpei – one of the four islands that makes up Micronesia – not a member of FIFA, the island has no fund to repair the pitch or improve the drainage so training was briefly shifted to Daini Field, the College of Micronesia’s baseball field.

To join FIFA, Micronesia needs to show that football is flourishing on all four islands and the Federated States of Micronesia Football Association (FSMFA) has been in touch with the Oceania Football Federation over the possibility of joining and is working to encourage the game in the other islands of Chuuk, Kosrae and Yap.

Paul Watson, the FSM’s English head coach, and his assistants, fellow Englishman Matthew Conrad and the Nepalese expat Dilshan Senarathgoda set up a league in Pohnpei and want to do the same in Chuuk and Yap. Conrad and Senarathgoda visited Chuuk on August 18 and will join Watson on a trip to Yap for a week in October.

Yap was the home of Micronesian football in the 1990s, when a national team took part in the Micronesian Games but with no funding, the game lost momentum and fell apart. In 2011, Pohnpei will host the Federated States of Micronesia’ games and the FSMFA want all four islands to enter football teams to demonstrate to FIFA how the sport is progressing.

FIFA membership a decade away for Kosovo warns ex-manager

2010-08-03T14:00:00.006+01:00

This story has also been published by When Saturday Comes

In the last week, football in Kosovo – Europe's newest country – should have received a real fillip after tacit acknowledgement by FIFA and the United Nations. Football's world body agreed to regulate the sale of players from Kosovan clubs even though the Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) is not a member, while the UN's highest court ruled that the country's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not break international law.

International transfer certificates will be issued for Kosovan players, a move welcomed by the country's clubs, who are losing players without transfer fees. But another FFK plea, to play international friendlies, was rejected as the world body underlined the lack of recognition. "The FFK recognises that from [this] agreement there is nothing from which a favourable view of its wish to join FIFA and UEFA can be inferred," said FIFA in a statement.

The FFK cannot join UEFA or FIFA until full statehood and membership of the UN is secured. So far 69 countries, including the US and most of the European Union, consider Kosovo a country. Spain are among several European countries who do not, along with Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovakia. All of these states have internal issues, such as the breakaway Turkish state of Northern Cyprus and the predominantly Hungarian-speaking areas seeking greater autonomy within Romania; recognising the Kosovans would only fuel their own problems.

"Qualifiers for Euro 2012 begin in September and Kosovo will not participate," says former Kosovo manager Edmond Rugova (pictured). "Time is going by and the youth of Kosovo is being ignored and discriminated against. Who would have thought that this was going to continue even when Kosovo [was an] independent and democratic country?" Rugova, a former Yugoslav youth international and later a striker for New York Cosmos in the NASL, returned from the US to take charge of Kosovo.

Struggling to find fixtures, Rugova focused on holding training camps for young Kosovans who had fled his country during the 1999 war with Serbia. At a camp in Basel in 2008, Rugova came across a talented 16-year-old striker called Xherdan Shaqiri. To the surprise of many Swiss fans, Shaqiri joined two other exiled Kosovans – Valon Behrami of West Ham and FC Nuremburg's Albert Bunjaku – in Ottmar Hitzfeld's squad that went to this summer's World Cup.

Discouraged by the stasis that Kosovo's footballers have been left in, Rugova has returned to the US and does not expect any change until the opposition from Serbia, Russia, China and Spain is overcome. "Kosovo will have to watch Kosovar players represent other countries and wonder," says Rugova. "I said it would take at least ten years until Kosovo is recognised by FIFA, now I say it will take ten years if Kosovo is lucky."

FIFA to regulate Kosovo transfers

2010-07-23T09:39:00.007+01:00

This article appeared in yesterday's issue of Soccer Business World

The Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) will be allowed to issue international transfer certificates for all the players transferred to and from Kosovar clubs in a breakthrough for the former Yugoslav republic.

Kosovo has been lobbying for international recognition since declaring independence in February 2008. All but five European Union countries accept Kosovan independence but the FFK needs their country to be a member of the United Nations before being accepted into UEFA and FIFA.

This has isolated Kosovo and players are being poached by clubs that do not have to follow FIFA’s rules but that is about to change. “The FIFA have signed a so called contract with KFF for these cases,” a source close to the talks told SBW. “For the first step they have invited secretary general [Eroll Salihu] for an up-coming workshop of [the] transfer matching system (TMS) of FIFA. Although, this have been done on the good will of FIFA for the Kosovar players, this have been considered as the first step of the full membership of KFF in near future by the KFF president, Fadil Vokrri. KFF have signed the contract and after the FIFA signed it, there will be some 60 days to take effect.”

A second request to permit the national team of Kosovo to play friendlies was not passed. FIFA insist that the move is not a precursor to recognition for the FFK. “The [FFK] wishes to be admitted as a member of FIFA and UEFA as soon as possible, but is aware and recognises that membership is not possible at this moment in time,” a FIFA spokesperson told SBW.

“In view of its duty to prevent methods and practices, particularly in association football, that might jeopardise the integrity of matches or competitions or give rise to abuse of association football, FIFA granted to football clubs that belong to the Football Federation of Kosova the right to invoke the relevant provisions of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players in relation to the maintenance of contractual stability between professional players and clubs in connection with the transfer of players to a FIFA member association and to request adjudication from the competent FIFA bodies according to the applicable regulations.

"This means that clubs belonging to the FFK undertake to comply with and respect the relevant provisions of the aforementioned Regulations as well as the relevant procedural rules. Furthermore, clubs belonging to the FFK expressly recognise the right of clubs belonging to FIFA member associations to lodge claims against them with the pertinent FIFA bodies or to request any investigations that may result from the application of the above-mentioned Regulations. In summary, the clubs belonging to the FFK were granted the rights in relation to the maintenance of the contractual stability, but must also assume the respective duties.

"Finally, it is important to emphasise that the FFK confirmed that it is aware and recognises that from the above-mentioned agreement there is nothing from which a favourable view of its wish to join FIFA and UEFA can be inferred.”

FIFA tried late last year to bring together the associations of Serbia and Kosovo in Zurich but this failed after officials from Belgrade pulled out. Serbia’s football association had confirmed on 3 November that the president of the association, Tomislav Karadzic, would talk with representatives of the football association of Kosovo but Serbia told FIFA five days later that its representatives would not attend.

In a letter to FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke, the Serbian FA 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 issue of transferring players from Kosovo was due to go to a vote of the FIFA executive committee in December but no progress was made. The European Parliament recently called on the last five EU member states yet to recognise Kosovo's independence to comply but European Parliament members admit nothing will happen before an International Court of Justice ruling on the legality of Kosovan independence this summer.

So far, 69 countries recognise Kosovo, including the US and most EU member states with the exception of Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovakia. Cyprus, divided since the Turkish invasion in 1974, rejects Kosovo's declaration of independence owing to its stance on territorial integrity and the lack of UN approval. It is backed by Greece, while Spain – which has its own regional tensions – cites lack of respect for international law as justification for its opposition. Romania, home to an ethnic Hungarian community in 'Székely Land' that is pushing for a higher level of autonomy, and Slovakia, with its own significant Hungarian minority group, have also rejected the legality of Kosovo's secession from Serbia.

Viva World Cup 2010

2010-06-08T10:00:00.003+01:00

Kurdistan vs Regno della due Sicilies. Image courtesy Miléna Kit NFB (c)

This article also appears on Play The Game

Padania completed a hat-trick of successes in the Viva World Cup for non-FIFA nations at the weekend but the latest tournament in the Maltese island of Gozo was a far lower profile affair than last year.

In 2009, Padania hosted the tournament in a blaze of publicity, including live TV coverage of some games, but Sunday’s 1-0 win over Kurdistan – a repeat of last year’s final – was not screened after Kurdish television decided against screening the tournament.

This year’s VWC did see the highest number of entrants with six teams playing and sponsorship from Vellone Sports and Bank of Valletta.

The tournament was also staged without interference by the Malta Football Association and a full international took part for the first time with Danijel Bogdanovic of Sheffield United and Malta captaining hosts, Gozo.

The tournament also featured Provence, Occitania – a side of players, who can speak the medieval language of Occitan - and Regno della due Sicilies representing the ancient kingdom of southern Italy.

The first VWC was held in 2006 in southern France and nine different teams have played in the four tournaments but Monaco, a team representing Sweden’s Aramean Suryoye minority and the Sami tribe from Scandinavia did not travel to Gozo.

The Sami played in the first three tournaments but missed out after internal disputes between the Swedish and Norwegian elements of the tribe.

The next VWC will be in Kurdistan in 2012 after the organisers, the New Federation Board pushed back the tournament by a year to try and attract teams from the Island Games football tournament, which will be held in 2011 on the Isle of Wight.

Monaco quits NF Board

2010-05-25T16:09:00.012+01:00

A version of this story appeared in Soccer Business World.

The Monaco Football Association has quit the NF Board for non-FIFA nations, which later this month holds its fourth Viva World Cup (VWC).

As a member of the United Nations, the Mediterranean principality is eligible to join UEFA but has not done so for fears that this could jeopardise the position of AS Monaco ASM) in France’s Ligue 1. Opportunities for Monegasques are rare at ASM and local players that started there, such as Guy Platto, Renaud Connen and Gregory Campi, have invariably left.

A national team was started in response to these lack of opportunities but, excluding tax exiles, Monaco only has a population of around 8,000 and there are only 60-odd eligible players.

Monaco were one of the founder members of the NF Board and played in the first VWC in 2006 but the growth of the organisation and inclusion of teams such as Kurdistan and Padania has created problems for Monaco.

“We didn’t participate to the [2010] Viva World Cup as we are not anymore member of the NF Board,” explained Yohan Garino, one of Monaco’s most capped players. “For political reason, we are not authorized by our Government to play against some teams.

"We also had some problems with the NF Board and teams of the association who used pictures of the national football team of Monaco and the Prince Albert as advertisement for their many exhibitions without authorisations. We were very disappointed about this last point which deserves us.”

Monaco have written to the NF Board explaining their decision. The organisation’s secretary general, Jean-Luc Kit, expressed his disappointment but hopes that some solution can be produced to prompt Monaco to return but with the next VWC scheduled for Iraqi Kurdistan in 2012, this may create further political problems that keep the Monegasques on the sidelines.

New FIFA members?

2010-05-07T11:50:00.005+01:00

This story also appears on Play The Game

A FIFA working party is attempting to help small nations and territories unable to gain recognition by the world body in a move that risks sparking outrage among other potential members.

Geoff Thompson, a former chairman of England’s Football Association (FA) and a current vice president of FIFA, chairs a working group at the world body that is looking at issues faced by small nations and territories not currently recognized internationally. Thompson and Urs Kluser, director of member associations and development at FIFA, have visited the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu and Sint Maarten - a Dutch administered territory that occupies half of the Caribbean island of Saint Marten. Their low-key programme of trips culminated in a visit to the British Crown dependency of Jersey on April 14-16.

“The key purpose of their visit [to Jersey] was to understand the football organisation within the island, understand the current island situation with regard to football development [and] understand the relationship with and support currently received from the FA,” explained FIFA, which confirmed that only three places are being visited by Thompson’s working party and that no other visits are planned.

Tuvalu, which has a population of just over 12,000, took part in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers without even being a full member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) let alone FIFA. FIFA is waiting on a final report from Tuvalu following the working party’s visit and the island is likely to become Oceania’s twelfth full member and the next member of the world body.

That will disappoint a number of other territories lobbying for FIFA membership, notably Kosovo, whose independence from Yugoslavia in February 2008 has been recognized by 66 countries – but not by the United Nations (UN) or FIFA. FIFA is working to stamp out illegal trading in Kosovan players, which has denied clubs in Kosovo much-needed funds, but any new member of the world body must be accepted by a regional confederation first.

UEFA insists that all new members are recognized by the UN to prevent Gibraltar from joining and upsetting Spain. This rule also keeps out Kosovo, whose independence is vehemently disputed by Serbia, and UEFA president Michel Platini has promised the Serbs that he will respect the UN’s decision – a promise that will also hinder Jersey’s aspirations. Any move towards international footballing recognition would provoke a political storm in Serbia and Russia and FIFA confirmed to media in Kosovo that no visits from Thompson’s working party are scheduled.

FIFA’s last attempt to resolve a long-running political dispute brought the football association in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Cyprus Football Association together for the first official talks in more than three decades but these ground to a halt after two years.

The world body has been more successful in helping associations in less contentious regions, such as Greenland, where last year a U$D 400,000 FIFA grant channeled through the Dansk Boldspil-Union provided the Arctic island with its first artificial pitch. The Jersey Football Association is keen that their attempts to develop football on the Channel Island are seen in isolation and do not get caught up in sporting politics.

“Of course nothing is guaranteed but I do believe there is now a genuine recognition and understanding of the international void we find ourselves in,” said JFA president Ricky Weir after Thompson’s visit.

On returning to Switzerland, Kluser told Weir: “It was inspirational to see what a small FA can achieve. I will certainly share with my colleagues what we have seen during our stay on the island. As discussed in our meetings, we will do what we can to further the question of the Jersey FA within the international football family.”
Jersey is a member of the FA, along with neighbours Guernsey, and the JFA is trying to set up a competition with other places caught in international limbo – but only non-contentious ones, not the likes of Kosovo.

Jersey’s plans for an International Shield have yet to come to fruition but this September the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) will stage the second Coupe De L’Outre Mer for French departments. The tournament began last year and eight teams will journey to France for the next event, featuring Reunion, Martinique, French Guiana, Mayotte, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, French Polynesia and Guadeloupe.

For Guadeloupe, the tournament is a vital outlet for a region, whose team reached the semi-finals and quarter finals respectively of the last two Gold Cups for teams in CONCACAF yet is not even a full member of this body so remains excluded from World Cup qualifying. News that FIFA’s working party would not be visiting Guadeloupe was a disappointment to the Ligue Guadeloupeenne de Football but the LGF’s Alain Soreze said: “In Guadeloupe, we work hard with French FA to authorize us to be a full member of CONCACAF that is our first step.”

Jersey Breakthrough

2010-04-28T11:27:00.004+01:00

This story has also been published by When Saturday Comes

Could last week’s visit to Jersey by a FIFA delegation be the first step towards playing the Channel Island playing international football?

The trip to the island was led by Geoff Thompson, formerly chairman of the Football Association, but more latterly a vice president of both FIFA and UEFA. In tow was Urs Kluser, development director for FIFA’s grandly titled member associations and development division.

“They were extremely positive about what they found in Jersey,” Ricky Weir, president of the Jersey Football Association (JFA), told WSC. “Of course nothing is guaranteed but I do believe there is now a genuine recognition and understanding of the international void we find ourselves in.”

Jersey has a population of 87,400 – roughly double that of FIFA members Andorra, the Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein and San Marino – but as a British Crown Dependency is not eligible for FIFA.

Not because of FIFA’s regulations, which simply require recognition by the undefined ‘international community’ but because the JFA needs to get into UEFA first. The European body has far tighter membership criteria. Potential entrants must be members of the United Nations – a rule designed to keep out Gibraltar and appease Spain. As a result, Jersey is on the international touchlines along with the likes of Guadeloupe and Kosovo.

What makes FIFA’s visit to St Helier interesting is that firstly, FIFA finally seems to have accepted that a grey area exists between regional and international football and, secondly, that Jersey has successfully promoted itself into this limbo zone.

Not content with the football tournament at the Island Games – a sort of mini-Olympiad for islands – in 2008 Jersey staged a three-way tournament with two other rejects, Gibraltar and Madeira, and plan another tournament with Guernsey.
Guernsey are looking to field a club side in a UK-league but under Weir, who was born in Coatbridge and played internationals for the British Virgin Islands before moving to St Helier, Jersey will not let the idea of international football drop.

Weir has been in contact with UEFA president Michel Platini but enticing an official FIFA delegation is the JFA’s biggest success to date. After returning home, Kulser told the JFA: “As discussed in our meetings, we will do what we can to further the question of the Jersey FA within the international football family.”
Kulser’s working party has also visited an unidentified Asian region and another in CONCACAF.

In response to WSC’s questions, FIFA said: “Geoff Thompson and Urs Kluser’s visit was as part of working group chaired by Mr Thompson to look at the issues faced by small nations and territories, such as Jersey, not currently recognized internationally. The key purpose of their visit was to: understand the football organisation within the island; understand the current island situation with regard to football development; [and] understand the relationship with and support currently received from The FA.”

FIFA said the other places included in Kr Kulser’s could not be “clarified” until later this week but one place in CONCACAF that is also stuck in international limbo is Guadeloupe.

As a French department, Guadeloupe is not eligible for FIFA and the island’s footballers traditionally aspired to play for Les Bleus. Players like Marius Tresor and Lilian Thuram did so with success but that all changed in 2007, when Jocelyn Angloma, a veteran of Euro 92 and 96, accepted that his French international days were gone and returned home.

Led by Angloma, Guadeloupe reached the semi-finals of the 2007 Gold Cup (the North and Central American regional championship) where they were edged out 1-0 by Mexico. Angloma had retired by the time of the next Gold Cup in 2009 but the Gwada Boys still made the quarter finals.

Alain Soreze from the Ligue Guadeloupeenne de Football confirmed to WSC that the LGF had heard nothing about a visit from FIFA but without something greater to play for than the Gold Cup, Guadeloupe’s flourishing football scene will wither, as will the hamstrung game in Kosovo.

Dozens of countries recognise that Kosovo is a country. Sadly, the Serbs and Russia do not, forcing the likes of Lorik Cana and Valon Behrami into adopting other countries to play internationals.

Bournemouth’s St Helier-born striker Brett Pittman might not seem to be in the same bracket, but with FIFA showing signs of wanting to solve the dilemmas that a combination of politics and football generate, an international call-up could soon be on the way.

Viva World Cup Draw

2010-04-20T10:58:00.017+01:00

A version of this story was published in Soccer Business World and Play The Game.

A record six men's teams have entered next month’s Viva World Cup (VWC) for international teams not affiliated to FIFA.

The tournament that will be held in the Maltese island of Gozo for a week starting on May 29 2010 is the fourth staged by the NF Board and features the largest field so far.

The hosts will play with a side drawn from Gozo FC, which has previously played in the Maltese first division before slipping down the island’s pyramid, plus local teams, such as 2009/10 Gozo league champions Sannat Lions.

Gozo have been drawn with Padania, a team drawn from northern Italy that won the 2008 tournament and retained the trophy at last year’s third VWC. Padania have been linked by some critics of the tournament with the separatist Liga Nord political party but the NF Board insist that politics must play no part in the tournament.

Occitania, a team comprised of players who can speak the medieval language of Occitan found in southern France, Monaco and parts of Italy, make up a group with Gozo and Padania. Occitania staged the first three-team tournament in 2007 but have not taken part since. The other group features a side drawn from Iraqi Kurdistan that was runners-up last year and are expected to host the next tournament in 2012.

A team from the French region of Provence took part last year and has again entered. The other side in this group is a new entrant with a team representing the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies with players drawn from southern Italy

The Scandinavian Sami tribe – known more commonly as Laplanders – won the inaugural tournament in Occitania in 2007 and staged the 2008 event but for the first time in the event’s brief history will not send a team in 2010.

The Sami are spread across Norway, Sweden, Finland and a handful in Russia. Traditionally, the Sami FA has been made up of teams from Norway and Sweden but a number of the old Sami FA board have quit since the Norwegian Leif Isak Nilut was replaced as president two years ago by Mikkel Isak Eiras of Norwegian club Kautokeino IL. Departures include Hakan Kuorak from Gällivare, home to many of the Swedish Sami and the hosts for the 2008 VWC. "Now the Sami FA are concentrated to Norway and not the whole Sami area," said Kuorak.

Monaco also entered the first tournament but have not entered since, while the side drawn from Swedean’s Aramean Suroye community that played in 2008 will not feature in Gozo either.

The draw took place in Gozo at the weekend but was disrupted by the cloud of volcanic ash that has forced the cancellation of many air flights across Europe. At the draw, Jean Luc Kit also returned to the role of secretary general of the NF Board after a brief hiatus.

The last final was screened on satellite TV channel Rai Sport and there was also coverage on a number of other TV stations, including Rai Sport, Canale 5 and Rai 3.

The NF Board hope to get similar air-time for this year’s event, which will be sponsored by Vellone Sports and held in the 4,000 capacity Gozo Stadium in Xewkija and the Sannat Ground, which has a new artificial playing surface. A women’s tournament was to feature Gozo, Padania and Corsica and be staged at the same time as the men’s event but the French controlled island will not now take part.

Greenland's first artificial pitch

2010-03-05T14:03:00.008Z

An edited version of this feature appears in the latest issue of PanStadia magazine

The relentless growth of artificial sports surfaces has seen pitches established in just about every corner of the world – except one.

Greenland is the largest island in the world and one of the most sparsely populated places on earth yet more than 10 per cent of the 55,000 people that live there regularly play football despite obstacles few other players in the world could cope with.

The extreme climate means a season that only runs from May to September at best and when players can get outside and play, fixtures are generally played out sand pitches that mean tracksuit bottoms are essential and injuries from the hard surface proliferate.

The Greenland Football Association, the Grønlands Boldspil-Union (GBU), knew that an artificial pitch could transform how the game was played but finding the funds was the main problem.

A football championship was first staged in Greenland in 1958 and the GBU was set up in 1971 but the Greenlanders have slowly been moving towards greater political independence. In 1979, Greenland won home rule and, along with the Faroe Islands, now forms part of the Danish commonwealth.

As part of these wider moves towards greater autonomy, the Sports Confederation of Greenland cut ties with the Danish Sports Confederation. This meant that the GBU would stand alone from the Danish football association, the Dansk Boldspil-Union (DBU). Finding wider recognition with FIFA proved problematic, making development of the sport difficult but despite this, the GBU and agreed in 2006 that getting such a an artificial surface had to be a priority.

An artificial turf specialist from Denmark was invited over to Greenland and visited the island’s different towns to find a suitable venue. That in itself was no mean feat as Greenland has virtually no roads apart from a few kilometers in the capital, Nuuk. To get around the 2.2 million square kilometre island, which has a population of just 55,000, means trips by small plane or boat. Eventually, Qaqortoq was proposed as the most suitable venue.

The GBU worked with different civic groups on the plans and the DBU came on board with Poul Gilling, head of department for education and development, taking a keen interest in the project. Although the GBU is not affiliated to FIFA, Gilling saw a solution in the world body’s Goal Project, which has funded essential development projects across the globe.

FIFA had funded a Goal Project in French Guiana, which is an associate member of Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football but not affiliated to the world body. That grant was secured by the Fédération Française de Football, who applied on behalf of French Guiana, which is a French overseas department.

Greenland has more political autonomy than French Guiana but with the GBU unable to affiliate to FIFA, in 2005 a co-operation agreement was reached with the DBU to help the Greenlanders out with educating coaches, referees and organizers. When this agreement was renewed at the end of 2007, the GBU asked the DBU to support an application for Goal funding. Poul Gilling explains: “We decided to support them and a letter was sent to FIFA during the summer of 2008 signed by the [DBU] president Allan Hansen. FIFA decided to give the Danish FA money from the goal project and told us that they wanted us to tell the [GBU] that FIFA had supported the building of an artificial turf in Greenland. During a meeting with the Greenlandic FA at the end of 2008 we told them the news.”

The GBU’s president Lars Lundblad had the bulk of the funding that he needed for the project but more money was still needed. “The whole price for the artificial turf was about U$D 500,000 and FIFA paid U$D 400,000, explains Jens Tang Olesen, the manager of Greenland’s national team. “The rest was found locally in Qaqortoq. A group called Tapisali, who has been working with the plan for many years, collected about U$D 50,000.”

As FIFA was funding the project, the clients had to ask FIFA preferred suppliers to tender. Each of the bidders had to send a representative to Qaqortoq. The bidders were whittled down to two firms and Dutch supplier Edel Grass won out. Edel teamed up with native firm, Greenland Mining Services, and the local council, Kommune Kujalleq, to lay the surface with work starting in July. “Due to the climate it was important to be sure that the construction could handle a lot of snow, water and wind,” says the DBU’s Poul Gilling.

EDEL had worked on another FIFA sponsored project for the DBY for Brondby but for the company’s project manager Martin Høeg, the work in Qaqortoq was something really quite different. He explains: “Obviously, the Greenland weather conditions could potentially be quite a big challenge for this project. Even when most warm in July and August, the weather can suddenly, and without any warning, change for the worse.

Fortunately we got all thinkable support from the locals, including the local entrepreneur, who was doing the sub base and from the local representatives from the Greenland Football Association. Another big challenge unlike our traditional pitches [elsewhere] was the transport of grass and infill. Fortunately the professionals from Royal Arctic Line were very helpful in working out the most rational ways of getting our goods from different parts of Europe all the way to Qaqortoq.”

All the components for the project were shipped via Aalborg in Denmark to Qaqortoq, while EDEL sent out a team of four people led by Mr Høeg to work with the locals and the DBU persuaded Danish artificial turf expert Ejvind Naesborg to come out of retirement to act as their representative. “The good people of the Greenland FA were apparently able to light a spark in his mind, explaining about this exciting project in a place far, far away from his normal habitat,” explains Mr Høeg.

When the pitch was inaugurated on September 19 2009, crowds of people flocked to the rocks surrounding the turf to watch an unheralded club match (see photos).
Qaqortoq only has one club, K-33, with 150 children and 100 adults playing regularly in the town but around eight clubs and an estimated 400 children and 300 adults play in the wider South Greenland area, known as Kommune Kujalleq. As travel is so problematic in Greenland, a national championship is determined by local qualifiers with the winners of these regional series travelling to one destination for a play-off. When the championships are staged in remote towns like Uummannaq, participating can be a three-week commitment for players as travel to and from the finals can take a week for some sides and often involve boats and planes.

K-33 staged the championships in 1987, 1988, 1991, 1998 and most recently in 2003 and EDEL’s new surface will make Qaqortoq a popular venue for future championships once players and officials get a chance to experience what the new surface has to offer.

“When the football players and other people in Qaqortoq and South Greenland can see how wonderful it will be, many other places also will try to build artificial turf,” adds Jens Tang Olesen. “I think that it will be a kind of icebreaker, because it is the first in Greenland. Since 19 September, when the new turf in Qaqortoq was inaugurated the crime among the young people in Qaqortoq is going down. The turf will be very good for the football education in South Greenland – the players can now train and work more with their football technique and I think that the team-playing will be more possession than before, and the players can now tackle the opposition players without risk of getting hurt.”

Ironically, the only regular source of overseas competitive fixtures for Olesen’s team is the football tournament at the bi-annual Island Games, a sort of mini-Olympics for islands, where games are generally played on grass. Greenland played in every tournament since the Island Games’ inception in 1989 only to sit out the 2007 event due to lack of money. Greenland’s ladies went to Rhodes in 2008 instead but Olesen’s team returned for the last Island Games in the Finnish island of Åland in 2009 and should be in the Isle of Wight in 2011.

However, with Greenland’s first artificial turf finally in place, Olesen and the GBU are hopeful that more pitches will follow and are advancing plans for a tournament of their own. “The GBU hope that other towns will follow Qaqortoq,” explains Olesen. “The GBU try via newspapers and contact to the various agency and tell them how important this new artificial turf is for the football players in Greenland. The GBU hope that in 2012 there will be one or two new artificial turfs in other towns in Greenland, so that there can be arranged an international football tournament in Greenland, perhaps in Nuuk.”

For the DBU, there is also a larger goal. “With this project we hope a lot of children in Greenland will play a lot more football,” says Poul Gilling. “There are not many teams coming from Denmark to play in Greenland. With the new turf it might be possible that some teams will travel to Greenland to play.”

The subject of a television documentary by Greenlandic station KNW, few artificial surfaces are likely to be a transformative as the new pitch at Qaqortoq.

PROJECT BOX
Project: artificial turf pitch
Location: Qaqortoq, southern Greenland
Pitch size: 35-m x 64-m
Cost: U$D 500,000
Clients: Grønlands Boldspil-Union/Dansk Boldspil-Union
DBU advisor: Ejvind Naesborg
Turf supplier: Edel Grass
Contractors: Greenland Mining Services/Kommune Kujalleq

Pohnpei win first game for nine years

2010-02-25T10:18:00.009Z

The Micronesian island of Pohnpei State has beaten a strong Island All-Star side 2-1 in their first game since 2001.

After the success of last year’s Pohnpei Premier League, a national team was formed with the goal of a trip to Guam at the end of July 2010.

This was to be a real test for English coach Paul Watson’s side as the All-Stars had some of the island’s most respected and revered footballers, including Fijian powerhouse Tui, tricky striker Edwin Sione and SDA aces Matthew Barbosa and Ryan Billington.

Wearing their new uniforms, Pohnpei struggled to master the bumpy pitch in the opening minutes and they fell behind when Premier League top scorer Matthew Barbosa fired home.

But months of practice started to pay off as the men in blue passed the ball around neatly, creating several half-chances with Joseph Welson blasting inches over the bar and Marvin Jack nearly releasing Ryan Johnson with a delicate through ball. The goal can be seen here

When Pohnpei did get their breakthrough it was courtesy of young striking star Joseph Welson. He latched on to a Dilshan Senarathgoda pass and made no mistake in finding the net for 1-1.

The Pohnpei defence was now playing with authority. Denson Fairfield was magnificent in the air, Tom Mawi outmuscled any attacker while the experienced Robert Paul impressed in his new left-back role and Rocky Henly showed the excellent command of the game that earned him the Pohnpei Premier League Best Defender Award.

Nick Santiago, arguably Pohnpei State’s most exciting rising star, thriving in the defensive midfield position and Micah Selikar fought hard on the wing,
Growing in confidence, Pohnpei started to control the pace and play attractive two-touch passing football, but they found it hard to pick holes in the opposition defence.

At half-time, Charles Welson replaced Andrew Falcam in goal and Roger Nakasuna came on for Robert Paul.

And 10 minutes into the second period, Pohnpei went in front as Joseph Welson scored his second goal of the game – a cool finish to beat the onrushing goalkeeper.
Young talent Rodrigo Matamba substituted the excellent Marvin Jack and Island Warriors captain and Premier League Player of the Tournament Bob Paul came on for Ryan Johnson, whose limitless energy had caused constant trouble for the All-Stars defence.

Bob and Rodrigo were both sent into space by captain Dilshan, but after bursting clear with a turn of pace both could only find the goalkeeper with their crosses.
Neither side could find the net again as the light faded and Pohnpei had its first win in an official game.

Pohnpei Soccer would like to thank Albert Carlot for expertly refereeing the game, Micronesian Seminar for filming and Visual Impact for providing a camera for pictures.

Pohnpei State 2-1 Island All-Stars
Barbosa 4 (All Stars) J Welson 25, 55 (Pohnpei State)
Pohnpei State Team: Andrew Falcam (Charles Welson 45); Rocky Henly, Tom Mawi, Denson Fairfield, Robert Paul (Roger Nakasuna 45); Nick Santiago, Dilshan Senarathgoda, Micah Selikar, Marvin Jack (Rodrigo Matamba 60); Joseph Welson, Ryan Johnson (Bob Paul 60)
Referee: Albert Carlot

Viva World Cup 2012

2009-12-09T13:35:00.002Z

The following story is also available at Play The Game

The fifth world cup for ‘national’ teams that are not members of FIFA will be held in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2012 with up to a dozen teams.

The fifth version of the Viva World Cup (VWC) was due to be held in 2011 but has been put back a year after the organizers, the NF Board, struck an agreement with the Island Games Association (IGA), which is being held will in the Isle of Wight the same year.

NF Board secretary general Jean Luc Kit said: “We decided to play the Viva World Cup every two years and when the Island Games will not be played in deal with the IGA. The IGA explained that they want to help us.”

The Island Games is a biennial mini-Olympiad for islands and the football tournament at the last tournament earlier this year in the Finnish island of Åland saw the biggest entry yet with 16 teams entering.

IGA chairman Jörgen Pettersson agreed the deal at last weekend’s NF Board general assembly in Paris, which was attended by more than 50 people. He said: “The differences [between the IGA and the NF Board] are pretty big. Our members are islands and well defined, the NF Board members are more of territories and often complicated to define. We will however do our best to help them in their work to provide competition for sportspeople. After all, that is what we all do.”

The NF Board has visited Kurdistan, which took part in the 2008 and 2009 VWC’s, and claims that the Kurdistan Football Association (KFA) has funding to host up to a dozen teams in 2012. For some cash-strapped IGA members, such as Greenland, the possibility of financial assistance to compete in Kurdistan could prove tempting – hence the deal in Pairs.

“We went [to Kurdistan] and all the people, all the media, and the main cities want to host this competition,” added Mr Kit. “The area is totally secure they will have money to host the 10 or 12 teams scheduled.”

Kurdistan has a three-tier league, including a 16-team top flight, and the 25,000 capacity Franso Hariri Stadium in Erbil, and KFA representatives were among the more than 50 people at the NF Board assembly.

“[The KFA] did a presentation of their region and surprised me a lot having thought about the region as dangerous and poor,” added Mr Pettersson. It is probably the other side around nowadays with two international airports and a Four Season Hotel under construction.”

The NF Board assembly also included representatives of football associations claiming to represent Corsica, the Casamance region of Senegal, Provence in France, Wallonia, the Padania region of northern Italy, which hosted the third VWC earlier this year.

The football association from the Maltese island of Gozo was also in Paris and will host the next VWC from May 25 to June 2010 at the Sannat and Gozo stadiums. Also in Paris were representatives of footballers from Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was occupied by Morocco in 1975.

“A delegation of three people came from the [refugee] camps in Algeria,” added Mr Kit. “They are very motivated, worked hard and re full of contacts. Western Sahara has two sets of players in Spain and the Canary Islands at a good level.”

New FIFA deal for Kosovo

2009-12-05T12:08:00.004Z

This story is also on Play The Game

A deal to ensure that Kosovan clubs are compensated properly when players sign for foreign sides should be rubber-stamped this Friday (December 4) at FIFA’s executive committee meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

Last week, Football Association of Kosovo president Fadil Vokrri and general secretary Eroll Salihu traveled to Zurich to show FIFA documents that proved the FFK was a member of the old Yugoslavian association just like other states that broke away and secured independence, such as Croatia and Slovenia.
Having established this with FIFA, the FFK expect an international players’ certificate for Kosovan players to be agreed in Cape Town.

“For the past two decades Kosovar players have been taken or have moved about without any authorization whatsoever,” says Edmond Rugova, the former manager of the Kosovan national team and now chief executive of the country’s biggest club, FC Prishtina.

“If FIFA writes these certificates for Kosovar players into law then the players, the clubs and the FA's would be protected. Kosovar clubs will be able to demand signing on fees just like any other club, which so far hasn't been the case.”

At last week’s meeting in Zurich, the FFK also handed over to FIFA a list of players who have been signed by foreign clubs, who did not pay any fee to their Kosovan clubs.

Rugova explains: “Players have been taken from FC Prishtina and other clubs for nothing before. A few years ago FC Prishtina players like Armend Dallku and Debatik Curri who now play for FC Poltava [in the] Ukraine and represent Albania internationally were taken without authorization or compensation. That practice continues to this day, except FC Prishtina that has been able to put an end to it by demanding that the laws for player transfer are respected.”

Last year, FC Prishtina secured transfer fees for the first time when Swiss clubs FC Schaffhausen and Winterthur signed Visar Berisha and Shqipron Skeraj respectively but this was a one-off.

“FC Prishtina was compensated properly [and] is the only club in Kosovo that has been able to accomplish this,” says Rugova. “I believe FIFA's decision to take up on this issue and hopefully legitimize it is a step in the right direction before [the FFK] becomes a full member of FIFA and UEFA.”

Greater political recognition is needed before that can be secured but the FFK has already sealed a deal to take advantage of the lucrative commercial opportunities that will come with full membership and the international fixtures in the World Cup and European championship qualifying rounds that come with that.

The FFK has signed a strategic alliance with the Swiss-based Kentaro Group, who will market TV, media and sponsorship rights for Kosovan football in return for helping the FFK develop a more professional structure.

“As soon as Kosovo is recognised by the European Union and the United Nations as an independent state, there will no longer be any obstacle to it becoming a member of FIFA and UEFA,” said FFK president Fadil Vokkri. “Together with Kentaro, we will establish Kosovan football.”

Serbs do not show up for Kosovo talks

2009-11-15T13:20:00.003Z

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

2009-11-06T11:20:00.004Z

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

2009-09-02T09:34:00.008+01:00

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.

Viva World Cup III report

2009-07-07T20:43:00.016+01:00

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

A football tournament staged by supporters of the Italian separatist party, 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

2009-06-02T17:03:00.005+01:00

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

2009-05-11T10:42:00.006+01:00

The following story also appears on 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

2009-04-27T17:28:00.009+01:00

The following story also appears on Play The Game.

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

2008-12-04T09:07:00.011Z

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

2008-11-02T11:08:00.014Z

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

2008-03-19T16:09:00.011Z

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

2008-02-23T11:08:00.014Z

Outcasts has received some good coverage overseas including Idrottsforum.org in Sweden, 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.

Shortlist Surprise

2008-01-25T13:43:00.004Z

Amazingly, Outcasts has been shortlisted for the National Sporting Club football book of the year award

Outcasts is the rank outsider and its great simply to be on a shortlist with the likes of Sir Bobby Charlton's account of his years at Manchester United, Graeme Le Saux's autobiography and 'Provided You Don't Kiss Me' by Duncan Hamilton, who has already won the William Hill sports book of the year award.

The winners of this award and a number of others are unveiled on March 18 at the Cafe Royal in London.

Birkbeck talk on Outcasts

2008-01-13T09:47:00.009Z

On March 5, I will give a talk at the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre at University of London on the researching and writing of Outcasts and how I came to write the book.

Entry is free and anyone is welcome. More details on timing and location are here

Reviews for Outcasts

2007-12-30T16:58:00.014Z

Outcasts has had some good media coverage since coming out at the end of November in a number of national and regional newspapers and football magazines and was serialised in Four Four Two.

The book was named best sports book of the week in The Independent on Sunday, best book in the February 2008 issue of Four Four Two and was the subject of a feature in the Jersey Evening Post and Metro

The book has also featured in the Jersey Evening Post and on a number of radio stations, including BBC London, BBC Wales, Chick Young's World of Football on BBC Radio Scotland, Channel 103FM, Manx Radio and BBC Guernsey.

Listed below are some of the comments and links to some of the English-language reviews/mentions.

"One book that might intrigue the discerning reader this Christmas" - Sunday Telegraph

"Buy this" - The Times

"Menary is an admirably sure-footed guide ... he never loses sight of the human stories" - When Saturday Comes

"Lively, informative" - The Independent on Sunday

"Menary is an enthusiast with a talent for getting the best out of his interviewees and a keen eye for the encapsulating episode" - Daily Telegraph

"Thought provoking questions about the nature of national identity" - Four Four Two

"Outcasts! is a must-read for all football fans" - Sporting Life

“Excellent … Outcasts is as good as it gets” - Birmingham Post

"Menary is an admirably sure-footed guide ... he never loses sight of the human stories ... a gentle meditation not merely on the power of football, but also on what it means to be a country" - When Saturday Comes

"Once in a while a book comes along with an unusual subject matter that captures the imagination and Menary's Outcasts falls into that category" - Yorkshire Post

"A thoroughly absorbing and entertaining examination of the issues involved, never threatening to outstay its welcome" - Isle of Man Today

"A fascinating insight" - Guernsey Press & Star

"Outcasts! is a great book, about the love of the game that makes people want to take part and how FIFA make their odd decisions" - The League magazine