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.
