FIFA to Consider 2-Year Residency Reqmnt on Tues

[beachesl]

SwissGC on BigSoccer has passed on the following report from the Swiss paper Tages-Anzeiger:

quote:

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Fifa-Einbürgerungsentscheid am Dienstag. Künftig sollen Fussballer mindestens zwei Jahre im betreffenden Land leben, ehe sie die Spielberechtigung für dessen Nationalteam erhalten können. Dies will die Fifa am Dienstag beschliessen. Vor allem Fifa-Präsident Joseph Blatter hatte sich letzte Woche für eine schnelle Regelung des Einbürgerungsproblems stark gemacht.

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Translation: FIFA will make a decision on Tuesday, March 16, extraordinary meeting of executive that will require players to live for two years in the country they hope to represent. I assume it will be effective immediately. I also assume that it will not be retroactive to stop Bircham and the Whore.

[beachesl]

Another report, this time in Portuguese:

http://br.esportes.yahoo.com/040313/4/isn5.html

quote:

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Fifa responde ao projeto do Qatar

A meta dos dirigentes do Qatar de naturalizar jogadores brasileiros para disputar as Eliminatórias para a Copa do Mundo de 2006 incomodou a Fifa. Na tarde deste sábado o presidente da entidade, Joseph Blatter, anunciou que no dia 16 de março seu comitê vai se reunir de forma extraordinária para discutir o assunto.

Segundo fontes da Fifa a entidade vai decidir que um atleta, para se naturalizar, precisará morar dois anos no país. A decisão não terá unanimidade, pois o presidente da confederação asiática é Mohamed Bin Hammam, do Qatar, que participará da reunião.

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It basically says there'll be a FIFA extraordinary meeting in March 16 and they will decide that any player has to live at least 2 years in the country prior to be eligible to play for them. At the end, it adds that the decision need NOT be unanimous, and that Qatar's Hammam, who is also President of the Asian Football Association, will participate in the meeting.

2 Years Residence! They must have been reading my posts!

[Gordon]

quote:Originally posted by beachesl

SwissGC on BigSoccer has passed on the following report from the Swiss paper Tages-Anzeiger:

quote:

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Fifa-Einbürgerungsentscheid am Dienstag. Künftig sollen Fussballer mindestens zwei Jahre im betreffenden Land leben, ehe sie die Spielberechtigung für dessen Nationalteam erhalten können. Dies will die Fifa am Dienstag beschliessen. Vor allem Fifa-Präsident Joseph Blatter hatte sich letzte Woche für eine schnelle Regelung des Einbürgerungsproblems stark gemacht.

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Translation: FIFA will make a decision on Tuesday, March 16, extraordinary meeting of executive that will require players to live for two years in the country they hope to represent. I assume it will be effective immediately. I also assume that it will not be retroactive to stop Bircham and the Whore.

Once again FIFA acting swiftly to ensure only the Europeans (and perhaps marginally the Japanese) can benefit from FIFA's ridiculous eligibility requirements. Its either real requirements or no requirements, not this bull$**** that allows developed nations to plunder under-developed nations.

[Canuck Oranje]

Not as cut and dried as the press may believe.. The whole question of residency would seem to be a minefield. In addition to the concerns expressed by Gordon, what is meant by a 2 year residency? Citizenship for two years? If the player has a residence in the country of Citizenship for two years? Does the player have to spend at least x months of each year in the country (like tax authorities use and medicare)?

Surely they are not expecting a player to live 365 days of each year in the new country. That would seem absurd too.

Also given the desire of Qatar to upgrade its National team, why don't they open a consulate in the city where Ailton will play next year and let him live there? Consular offices and Embassies have special status. Needless to say, this can get very complicated fast.

Nevertheless, I suspect it will read something like, the player will have to have been a citizen for two years and live in the country of his choice for at least x days of each year...

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by Massive Attack

I agree with you Gordon.

Pesonally, I don't see the difference between the Whore and Ailton. The grandfather rule is rather weak in my opinion. You could argue (it wouldn't be too dificult), that the Whore dressing for England is just as financially inviting as Ailton dressing for Quatar.

Hmmm... well, I like the British Isle-nation's insistence that to play for a country there, you MUST have a direct blood-link to that nation (of course, this probably means that England will forever be stuck with players that have no first touch)! To me that means more than Ailton's link to Qatar. If every nation followed the British Isles' rules, then NT football would always be distinctly different from club-football. ... This 2-year residency-thing is just about as meaningless as Ailton's link with Qatar.

[beachesl]

Sorry, I feel uncomfortable with this whole "blood-link" thing, it sends shivers up my spine. Without saying it, you know the things that this hearkens back to. If you are born in Canada, nurtured in Canada, educated in Canada, trained in Canada, lived all your life in Canada, speak like a Canadian, then why should you be allowed to play in a country that just happens to be the place of birth of a parent or grandparent. If I move to a country to live and work there, to make love there, and pay taxes and make some commitment there, shouldn't that be more of a connection than a tenuous blood link. Culture is beautiful, but much of our problems here in Canada (Air-India bombings, disputes between the various Slavic communities, the Irish sending arms to Belfast, etc) is often a result of a tenuous link with a fatherland that we have no real connection with. Since this debate started, I have learned that Santos played in Tunisia for 7 years, married a Tunisian woman, learned to speak Arabic and French...he belongs on the Tunisian team far far more than Bircham belongs on the Canadian team or the Whore with England...where is the commitment, where is the personal link that makes the connection more than a distant idea?

I am reminded of the story last year of two Inuit children, a brother and sister, from Alaska that were adopted by an Israeli couple. They had spent most of their life in Israel, became Jewish, and spoke perfect Hebrew. They were blood Innuit, but really they were Israeli (the story was occaisoned by their being in the Israeli army... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3288515.stm ). I know that many of the posters here cling to their ethnic backgrounds, and that is wonderful in terms of a cultural sense of completeness. But that doesn't make you any less Canadian. However, using it as an excuse to avoid your Canadian commitments does. Cheer for the Azzuri, my many Canadian friends here of Italo-extraction, but not when they play the Canucks!

There has to be some minimal standard. Citizenship and a minimal residency is the only one that is enforceable and makes sense. Naturalized Canadians who have walked the Canadian walk are just as Canadian as those born here. An estuary-speaking Brit who happened to have a Mom from a Canada he has not lived in are not. If Ailton and Whoregreaves felt they were now part of a German society after their time there, then it would have been perfectly legitimate for them to play for Germany. Their playing for, respectively, a Qatar and England where they have never lived and loved, for whatever motive, can never be legitimate.

Living in a place with a true sense of belonging can never be measured in rules. That has to be measured in the heart of each one making a decision. But there can be minimal standards, such as a two year residency rule (not hard to determine, it's done all the time for taxation rules), beyond which those decisions of the heart, whorish or wholesome, can be made. It can be meaningless in many circumstances, but it is a real enforceable beginning.

Do it FIFA, and damn the consequences of the what-abouts. Draw a liveable line in the sand.

End of rant[)].

[Gordon]

The problem with a simple residency requirement is that nations with Leagues - or at least high paying leagues - are going to have access to pillaging the best players from lessor nations, particularly poor nations. So there are hundreads of players from a variety of nations in the world qualifying for "residency" in nations across Europe, all getting pressure from the clubs that feed them to not go play in the African nations Cup, Gold Cup, Asian Cup etc. That makes them ripe for the picking.

What FIFA needs to do is make it very simple, the country you were born in, any country your family emmigrated to before you were older than 14 and has granted citizenship, or a country in which you have established permanent residency for at least 5 years - this latter could be measured by primary off season residence rather than in season residency. Ignore family links all together. Daddy is fooling himself if he thinks his family is Canadian after a life time in the US.

[beachesl]

I could live with that. If Septic Bladder were serious about his rants to prevent theft of players from underdeveloped countries, he could too.

As a stop-gap measure though (and that s alll you can do at an "extraordinary meeting" without doing studies and taking submissions), the two-year measure is acceptable...for the time being. I know there is hypocrisy in the euro-howling against the Ailton situation, but in your bones you know it's going too too far, Gordie.

Like the old country and western song goes: "But, when they kicked his dog, they done went too far...".

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by beachesl

Sorry, I feel uncomfortable with this whole "blood-link" thing, it sends shivers up my spine. Without saying it, you know the things that this hearkens back to. If you are born in Canada, nurtured in Canada, educated in Canada, trained in Canada, lived all your life in Canada, speak like a Canadian, then why should you be allowed to play in a country that just happens to be the place of birth of a parent or grandparent. If I move to a country to live and work there, to make love there, and pay taxes and make some commitment there, shouldn't that be more of a connection than a tenuous blood link. Culture is beautiful, but much of our problems here in Canada (Air-India bombings, disputes between the various Slavic communities, the Irish sending arms to Belfast, etc) is often a result of a tenuous link with a fatherland that we have no real connection with. Since this debate started, I have learned that Santos played in Tunisia for 7 years, married a Tunisian woman, learned to speak Arabic and French...he belongs on the Tunisian team far far more than Bircham belongs on the Canadian team or the Whore with England...where is the commitment, where is the personal link that makes the connection more than a distant idea? ...

...

...

End of rant[)].

True, true! I guess there's always gonna be examples where the residency-link is stronger than the blood-link, and others where the blood-link is stronger than the residency-link. However, BOTH are stronger than Ailton's link with Qatar. There's a difference between choosing country X over country Y despite having a stronger "link" to country Y (ie. Owen case), and choosing country X over 227 other possible countries (ie. Ailton case). I would say eliminating the latter option should be FIFA's main focus FOR NOW</u>!