CAS rules in favour of Gibraltar

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

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

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

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

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

'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

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

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

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

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

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

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."