Tiny Timor Leste lands in big trouble, faces AFC wrath for fielding ineligible players
>> The soccer federation of Timor Leste, a small nation in the Indonesian archipelago, has been charged by Asia’s regional soccer governing body with using forged and falsified documents to field ineligible players on its national team, according to a spokeswoman for the governing body, the Asian Football Confederation.
The case, which will be heard by the regional body’s disciplinary committee and which also includes charges for top officials of Timor Leste’s federation, could lead to a lengthy ban from international competition for the country.
Timor Leste, an impoverished country of 1.2 million people, is at No.191 in Fifa’s rankings, but last year it mounted a quixotic — although ultimately unsuccessful — campaign to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia by naturalising more than a dozen Brazilian-born players.
While clubs like Manchester United can use players from anywhere in the world, national teams — those that compete in the World Cup — are limited to native players or players who qualify as citizens because of a direct link to the country.
Since early 2011, however, a number of Brazilian-born players have competed using Timorese passports. Under Fifa rules, players can play for an adopted country only if they have lived there for five years as an adult, or had a parent or grandparent who was born there.
The issue did not come to a head until October 2015, when the Palestinian federation lodged a formal complaint with Fifa.
That complaint came after a tie between the Palestinians and Timor Leste in a World Cup qualifier in Dili, the Timorese capital, that dented the Palestinians’ chances of advancing in the qualification tournament.
While none of the Brazilians were used in subsequent World Cup qualifying matches, the practice resumed in June, when qualifiers began for the Asian Cup, the regional championship tournament.
That brought an investigation by the Asian confederation, which led to the charges this week.
A spokeswoman for the confederation said the matter would be addressed by the disciplinary committee this week.
If the Timor Leste Football Federation is suspended from the next World Cup and Asian Cup campaigns, as well as from other Asian confederation tournaments, it could mean an exile from international soccer until at least 2023, when qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup begin.
Leste Timor and Brazil have little history of migration, although both are Portuguese-speaking countries. Timor Leste also has no national league where those players could be employed.
Some of the naturalised Brazilians were not called to the national team, raising concerns that the Timorese passports were being distributed as a way for players to qualify as Asian players for clubs in the lucrative leagues of the Persian Gulf region and elsewhere.
Recently, Brazilian striker Santos Monteiro Junior Wanderley was suspended by the Asian confederation for using a forged or falsified Indonesian passport, and his club in the United Arab Emirates, Al Nasr, was excluded from the Asian Champions League.