Kosovo foiled again

This story also appears at sportingintelligence.com

There was little Christmas cheer from FIFA’s executive committee (ExCo) in Tokyo for Kosovo.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008 has been recognised by more than half of the United Nations’ members but the former Yugoslav Republic’s footballers are in limbo because the UN itself will not recognise the country due to opposition from Serbia and its ally Russia.

The Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) needs UN recognition to join UEFA, whose president Michel Platini has refused to make any exceptions. In May this year, FIFA president Sepp Blatter over-ruled Platini and insisted that Kosovo can play international friendlies.

Blatter’s plan soon ground to a halt but after months of filibustering, FIFA has now agreed to let Kosovan teams play at youth, amateur, women’s and club level – and not full internationals.

A disappointed FFK president Fadil Vokkri said: “The FIFA ExCo decsion is an important decision because it recognizes Kosovo’s role and participation in international football. We will make the best out of it for the good of our players, teams and clubs.

“But that decision is disappointing and not fully satisfactory because it seems to exclude the top national team for unexplained reasons.

“Now the FFK will present its request for affiliation to FIFA which the logical step since now the majority of the UN member states, 97, have recognized Kosovo and because 118 of the FIFA’s 209 member associations represent countries and territories having recognized Kosovo, meeting the criteria defined in Article 10.1 of the FIFa statutes for the affiliation.”

The ludicrous decision leaves Kosovo in international limbo with little for leading Kosovan players to aspire to.

With no senior Kosovan national team, players who are eligible for Kosovo but turning out for other national teams, such as Xherdan Shaqiri (pictured) of Bayern Munich and Switzerland, are unlikely to seek to change nationality.

FIFA and UEFA have both agreed that players such as Shaqiri and Lazio’s Lorik Cana, who plays for Albania, can play for Kosovo. This would not go down well with the national associations in Albania or Switzerland, who face losing a swathe of top players and the latest inexplicable decision smacks of suiting everyone else bar the isolated Kosovans.

Before the latest FIFA ExCo meeting in Tokyo, Vokrri wrote to Blatter pleading for a breakthrough.

“The decision you will take is about justice,” wrote Vokrri. “It is also about the FIFA statutes which mention the condition of the ‘recognition opf the international community’ in article 10. It is also about rewarding the football community of Kosovo and the FFK for having acted with responsibility, not applying directly for the affiliation knowing the political complications but limiting themselves to obtain the authorization to play friendly matches with whomever (sic) willing to do so.”

A senior Kosovan XI is unlikely to lack opponents. Dominica recently became the 97th country in the world to recognise Kosovo.

FIFA has 209 members and 118 of them – more than 56 per cent of the world’s football community – recognise Kosovo’s independence.

That, unfortunately for Kosovo’s footballers, is clearly not enough. Having taken a brave but sensible decision in May to support Kosovo playing international friendlies, Blatter and FIFA appear to be backtracking.

If international football is the peak of the game, then why is FIFA proving so spineless?

Greek Cypriots to visit the North

Costakis Koutsokoumnis, the chairman of the Cypriot Football Association (CFA), will visit his counterpart at the North Cyprus football association, the CTFA, Hasan Sertoğlu (pictured) in Turkish occupied Nicosia for the very first time.

The meting between the two sides at the CTFA headquarters on January 17 2013 represents a major step forward in relations between the two sides, who met on December 11 at the CFA headquarters in Nicosia on December 11.

After the December 11 talks, Sertoğlu said: "The island has suffered thanks to politicians and our focus is only on football, not on politics. I believe that with good will we can find a resolution to this problem."

The two sides have been split since the Turkish clubs went off to form the CTFA in 1955, but Koutsokoumnis said: "The footballing community of Cyprus wants a solution to the ‘football’ problem."

The CFA chairman also said that he hoped an initial plan could be agreed between the two sides within two months.

What solution can be proposed remains to be seen as the game in the Greek dominated south of the island is far more commercially developed. Apoel were quarter-finalists in last season's Champions League - an accomplishment that earned the Cyrpiot club more than

€18 million in prize money.

Clubs in Turkish Cyprus are semi-professional at best and big games rarely draw crowds of more than a couple of thousand. 

Many Northern Cypriot fans are more interested in the big Istanbul clubs playing in the Turkish Super Lig, but the potential for larger crowds in the north was demonstrated recently when AEL Limassol hosted Fenerbahçe in a Europa League game in Nicosia.

All of Fenerbahçe's ticket allocation was taken up by fans from Northern Cyprus. More than 1,400 Northern Cypriots travelled across the Green Line that separates the two communities to watch the game in Greek Nicosia (pictured below).

A united league or a Cypriot league featuring one or two Northern Cypriot sides could stimulate similar interest as the two sides show more ability to reach a compromise in a few months than their political counterparts have managed in years.

Northern Mariana to make AFC Challenge Cup debut

The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands have edged closer to FIFA recognition after being included in the qualifiers for the 2014 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Challenge Cup.

The islands, which are a member of the East Asian Football Federation and an associate member of the AFC, are one of 20 teams included in the qualifiers.

In their debut in the competition, the Northern Mariana team will face Bangaldesh, Nepal and Palestine in Group D qualifiers next year.

The Cup is a challenge competition for smaller Asian nations. The top two sides from each group plus the best two second-placed teams qualify for the finals in the Maldives. The winner of the competition will qualify for the finals of the 2015 Asian Cup, which will be staged in Australia.

Northern Mariana are unlikely to qualify but the qualifiers offer a chance for vital experience for a senior side that has so far been restricted to EAFF qualifiers and ad hoc friendlies against sides like neighbours Guam.

2012 Vatican Cup

Fortitudo 2007 have won the 2012 Coppa Vaticano. The competition has been renamed the Coppa Sergo Valci Stagione in memory of Dr Sergio Valci, the Septagenarian head of the Vatican Football Assoicatio, who passed away this Autumn.

Fortitudo 2007 (pictured above) only just squeezed into the semi-finals of the competition after finishing in fourth place in the five team group stage qualifiers with just one victory in four games.

In the two-legged semi-finals, Fortitudo 2007 faced New Hermes, a team representing the librarians in the Holy See that had won the group stage. 

Fortitudo thrashed New Hermes 4-1 on aggregate to set up a final with Pantheon 2007, who had finished second in the group stage and qualified for the final after beating telecoms team Dirseco on away goals. Neither Fortitudo 2007 nor Pantheon SD could find the net in the final. The game went to penalties with Fortitudo 2007 winning 4-3. Fortituido's striker
Fabrizio Gaudio finished the tournament as top scorer.

NEW EDITION OF OUTCASTS

A new revised edition of Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot has been published in Kindle format.

This second edition of the book includes a revised edition of the original text, which was shortlisted for the 2008 National Sporting Club football book of the year award, plus a new epilogue and extra photos.

For a free sample of Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot, click here.

Gibraltar take one more step....

This article also appears at worldsoccer.com

Spain’s threat to quit world football if forced to take part in the same tournaments as the British colony of Gibraltar has been exposed as meaningless.

After the Gibraltar Football Association applied to join UEFA in the late 1990s, the Spanish FA, the RFEF, wrote to the European body that Spain would refuse to ‘take part in, or organise, any competition in which Gibraltar participates.”

UEFA belatedly changed its statutes so that all new members are recognised as countries by the United Nations. This was done to accommodate Spain, forcing the GFA into a lengthy appeal that finally saw Gibraltar included in this week’s draws for UEFA’s futsal, Under-17 and Under-19 competitions – along with Spanish teams.

In October, Spain’s sports minister had vowed to ‘exhaust all legal means’ to stop Gibraltar securing full UEFA membership. That intimidation followed Gibraltar’s acceptance as a provisional UEFA member prior to their application going to a vote at the European body’s congress in May 2013. Spanish bluster was tested again on Tuesday with the draw for the qualifiers to the 2014 futsal European championships in Belgium.

UEFA ensured that even if Gibraltar progressed from a group featuring France, Montenegro and San Marino, there would be no possibility of a potentially embarrassing clash with Spain. If they qualify, Gibraltar go directly into a group with Italy, Hungary and Finland.

UEFA again artificially ensured that Spain would not face Gibraltar in the Under-17 qualifiers, which have thrown up an intriguing clash with England. The other sides in group seven are the Republic of Ireland and Armenia.

In the Under-19 draw, there was no need for UEFA meddling as the top seeded country gets a bye to the elite round. That happens to be Spain. Gibraltar would need to qualify from a tough group including Croatia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus to have any chance of playing their northerly neighbours.

Simply being included in the same competition as Gibraltar is humiliating for the RFEF, who now also face the prospect of Catalonia seceding if a growing move for independence succeeds. That should surely occupy the RFEF more than Gibraltar’s efforts but Spain’s sporting bodies are bound by the country’s politicians to suppress Gibraltarian attempts to assert sporting independence.

At next May’s congress in London, the GFA’s membership bid may fail as it did in Frankfurt in 2007. Then, the RFEF’s longstanding president Ángel María Villar Llona could coerce any associations sympathetic to Gibraltar’s cause with the threat of Spanish withdrawal. This week’s draw proved that threat to be nothing more than Spanish aire caliente.

What makes matters worse for Spain and UEFA is that Gibraltar are legally in the right. When the GFA first applied to UEFA, the colony was then eligible under the old rules, which had allowed the Danish controlled territory of the Faroe Islands to join a few years earlier.

Isolated by a closed border with Spain, Gibraltar wanted to emulate the Faroese, who have rarely been embarrassed since joining the international scene in 1988. UEFA’s criteria change and years of filibustering stifled that ambition.

Gibraltar have been stuck in international limbo. The only serious ‘international competition’ comes every two years in the Island Games, a tournament the Faroese won in 1989 and 1991 before focusing on senior internationals.

Gibraltar won the Island Games title in 2007 but an association that dates back to 1895 wants more for its footballers than playing together as a club in the lower Spanish leagues. That is the only offer on the table from the RFEF.

Supported by two separate rulings from the Court of Arbitration for Sport that UEFA’s exclusion of Gibraltar was akin to moving the goalposts, the colony’s footballers want better and are emboldened.

As provisional members, Gibraltar are entitled to be included in all UEFA draws right up to the vote. If Villar Llona – who will be influential in UEFA president Michel Platini’s bid to succeed Sepp Blatter as FIFA president in 2015 – again manages to spike Gibraltar’s ambitions, what happens to the colony’s teams already included in UEFA competitions?

Gibraltar will definitely compete in UEFA competition for the first time as the preliminary qualifiers for the futsal are scheduled for next month in Nice. The Under-17 and Under-19 qualifiers in Armenia and the Czech Republic respectively will be staged after the May congress. UEFA is also scheduled to play in an Under-16 development tournament in Albania a month after the vote.

Gibraltar will only take up their places in these tournaments if accepted as full members; something that not been communicated directly by UEFA to the Gibraltarians before the draws. Gibraltar’s potential opponents would appear to be wasting their time making arrangements until the UEFA Congress, but can hardly leave important details like scheduling and travel arrangements until then.

Even if Gibraltar loses the vote, the GFA will return as they have the backing of two CAS rulings over an issue that has rumbled on for 15 years and is about to come to a head.

A possible solution for UEFA is a form of junior membership. Other confederations have members that have not gone onto full FIFA membership for a whole variety of reasons. In Africa, there is Reunion and Zanzibar; in CONCACAF, the French colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana; in Oceania, Kiribati and Tuvalu. Martinique and French Guiana have even qualified for this weekend’s Caribbean Cup finals.

That gives these places far more options than Gibraltar had until this week. But some form of junior membership would create yet more problems for Platini, as other aspiring members from Greenland and Kosovo to Jersey and Kurdistan, would all be interested too.

No-one would surely object to helping the isolated, impoverished Greenlanders but Kosovo are already proving painful to Platini on another flank. Blatter has over-ruled his would be successor and wants Kosovo to play international friendlies. That proposal inflamed the Serbs and their Russian allies and remains in stasis.

For Platini, this week’s draws are the start of a problem that will surely only get bigger and more complicated.

Date set for Cyprus talks

The Cyprus Football Association and the federation from the Turkish-controlled north of the Mediterranean islands have set a date for the first formal talks between the CFA and the CTFA in more than four years.

The two sides will meet at 9.00am on December 11. Although a CTFA delegation led by president Hasan Sertoğlumet met with the CFA on November 20, this was an unofficial meeting at an independent venue. On December 11, Sertoğlumet and the CTFA delegation will meet at the headquarters of the CFA in Greek-Nicosia.

In advance of the meeting, CFA President Costakis Koutsokoumnis returned to his home city of Morphou/Lefke in the north of Cyprus and paid a visit to the local club there, Lefke TSK. Like the other 47 sides in the north, Lefke is a member of the CTFA, which split from the CFA in 1955 and has been in limbo since the declaration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which remains unrecognised outside of Turkey. 

Two Cypriot associations restart talks after four years

Signs of a breakthrough in the impasse between the two football associations in Cyprus are finally emerging.

For the first time since early 2008, the Cyprus Turkish Football Association (CTFA) representing the clubs in the unrecognised breakaway state of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) have met with officials from the Greek-dominated Cyprus Football Association.

The CTFA delegation was led by president Hasan Sertoğlu (pictured left) and met a CFA delegation at Limassol in the Republic of Cyprus. Muharrem Özseyfiler, the CTFA general secretary, said: “The two delegations met each other and exchanged views and ideas, and decided to meet again next December.”

The CTFA delegation also included head of external relations Orçun Kamalı (pictured right), legal adviser and CTFA appeal committee vice-president Hasan Balman, and former FIFA head of international relations Jerome Champagne, who is advising the CTFA,

The CFA delegation was led by president Costakis Koutsokoumnis and also featured deputy president Koumas Georghios, first vice-president Harıs Loizides and second vice president Nicos Nicolaou.

At the last talks, the CTFA was offered a chance to join the CFA but Turkish Cypriot officials were concerned that this would make the organisation subsidiary to the CFA, which was founded in 1934 and joined FIFA in 1948 – a dozen years before the then British colony achieved independence.

As conflict between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities grew in the run-up to independence, the Turkish Cypriot clubs split away in 1955 and have played separately ever since. The CTFA league features 48 clubs, who are unable to play games against any sides outside the TRNC.