Does FIFA want any more members?
Recent events suggest not as potential applicants such as
French Guiana and Zanzibar are not only being discouraged but also punished and
the shadow of FIFA’s new president Gianni Infantino hovers over these moves.
At the recent 2017 Gold Cup, French Guiana had a 0-0 draw with
Honduras over-turned and the match given as a 3-0 win to their opponents as
punishment for playing Florent Malouda, who had previously played for France 80
times but then featured for the land of his birth at the recent Caribbean Cup (below, right).
An undisclosed fine was also levied on the Ligue de Football de Guyane
(LFG), who believed that CONCACAF rules that had allowed another former Les Bleus Jocelyn Angloma (below) to play for
Guadeloupe in the 2007 Gold Cup after a five-year gap since his last France appearance should stand.
Other examples also exist, such as former Spurs forward Ruel Fox, who played for England B in 1994 then represented Montserrat a decade later when he was the manager of the British overseas territory.
French territories have also played at previous Gold Cups and Martinique - another French territory also outside of FIFA - was also playing at the 2017 edition.
The decision by CONCACAF’s to start adhering to FIFA rules only now smacks either of muddled thinking - or outside interference from FIFA.
The decision
also looks spiteful. On the eve of the Gold Cup, the LFG said it was
considering quitting the confederation due to the crusade against the Caribbean
nations that make up the bulk of CONCACAF’s members by its North American
leadership.
The LFG is
considering joining CONMEBOL, which in terms of geography and travel links makes
more sense.
The LFG was
made a full CONCACAF member in 2013 along with the other French territories of
Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint Martin, by CONCACAF’s then president Jeffrey
Webb.
The four
French territories seemed set for FIFA membership but this was stopped by both political
opposition in Paris and the arrest of Webb for racketeering in May 2015.
The Canadian
Victor Montagliani was elected was Webb’s permanent replacement in May 2016. By
this time, Infantino had his feet under the president’s desk at FIFA.
Montagliani
is considered very much Infantino’s man; so is the new CAF president Ahmad, who
in March 2017 ousted long-standing Confederation of African Football (CAF) president
Issa Hayatou.
At the same
March 2017 assembly that saw his demise, a motion from Hayatou that Zanzibar be prompted from an associate
member of CAF to a full member was passed.
Zanzibar’s
membership was removed to the disgust of many on the island, which is part of
Tanzania but has played independently in African regional competitions such as
the CECAFA Cup for three quarters of a century.
Zanzibar also
runs its own separate league to Tanzania, enters teams in CAF competitions and
had its CAF application approved by Tanzania football federation president Jamal Malinzi.
So why make
the U-turn now?
In July, Ahmad
pushed through major changes at CAF such as expanding the African Cup of
Nations to 24 teams.
These changes
would have needed tacit support from FIFA and Infantino, so perhaps there was a
cost?
Admitting
Zanzibar (in action against Somalia above) to FIFA would have given CAF as many members as UEFA and led to the
inevitable debate over the number of future places at a World Cup.
Sacrificing
Zanzibar was easy and the U-turn barely registered outside of the African
Island, but like CONCACAF’s move was also muddled and hard to believe.
"CAF cannot admit two different associations from one country," Ahmad told the BBC at the body's extraordinary congress in Morocco. "The definition of a country comes from the African Union and the United Nations," added the Malagasy administrator.
Did CAF’s
president really need four months to make himself aware of Article 4 of his
own statutes, which state ‘CAF shall recognise only one association per
country”?
Those
statutes also say that new members can only be admitted and expelled by the
general assembly, and mention nothing about the United Nations or African
Union.
This year, UEFA made a minor – and largely unnoticed –
change to its membership criteria.
Previously, Article 5 said that "membership of
UEFA is open to national football associations situated in the continent of
Europe, based in a country which is recognised by the United Nations as an
independent state, and which are responsible for the organisation and
implementation of football-related matters in the territory of their country."
The updated version says that new members must be recognised “as an independent state by the majority of
members of the United Nations.”
That minor tweak almost certainly rules out any attempts by the likes
of the Channel island of Jersey to join UEFA and justifies the begrudging
admission in May 2016 of Kosovo, which was virtually forced on the European
body by FIFA during the reign of disgraced former president Sepp Blatter.
So, these federations rendered outcasts in Infantino’s new world order
must labour on with little support or development from the bodies supposedly
responsible for developing football in these isolated places.
Or from FIFA.
And there’s the rub. Is there perhaps another motive for this
hardening stance to potential new members?
To get elected, Infantino pledged to raise FIFA’s Financial Assistance
Programme to the world body’s 211 members from U$D1 million every four years to
U$D5 million.
Before FIFA’s presidential election, rival candidate Jerome Champagne
warned of the potentially catastrophic effect of this move on FIFA’s finances (below).
Champagne was ignored and Infantino won by a landslide as the small,
impoverished associations which make up the bulk of FIFA’s membership swung firmly
behind the Swiss Italian and his costly FAP offer.
Since then, sponsors for FIFA’s 2018 and 2022 World Cups – the world
body’s main earner – have proved slow to emerge when compared to the last
tournament in Brazil in 2014.
FIFA is desperate for cash and federations have complained at the speed of money coming through from
FIFA’s Forward programme, which replaced the GOAL development scheme.
Maybe other costs are also being cut and FIFA is making sure that no
new members emerge from its six confederations to try and claim a their share of the FAP pot?
