FIFA
and the Asian Football Confederation may be turning a blind eye to the illegal
movement of players into Asia.
Timor-Leste,
also known as East Timor has been improving steadily in recent years, and just
recently moved ahead of Indonesia, the country it broke away from at the turn
of the century, in the FIFA rankings.
The
team has progressed beyond the preliminary stages of Asia's World Cup
qualifiers for the first time, and earlier this month, in their sleepy capital
of Dili, they almost pulled off a remarkable draw against one of the biggest
teams in the region, the United Arab Emirates.
A
large part of Timor's improvement has been done through the recruitment of
Brazilians with no discernable links to this poorest nation in Asia. And
neither FIFA, the AFC or the local FA will say how they qualify.
According
to FIFA regulations, a player born in one country can play for another country
if they have lived there for five years as an adult, and get citizenship. But
none of Timor's Brazilian contingent appear not to have lived or played in the
half-island nation as adults—if at all.
In
stark contrast to the team's home-grown talent, all of Timor's Brazilians are
professional footballers who make a living playing in countries as diverse as
Brazil, Bolivia, the UAE, Mexico, Kuwait, Portugal and Slovakia.
They
would also qualify to play for the Asian side if they had parents or
grandparents from there. However, despite a Portuguese colonial legacy in
Timor-Leste, there is no strong history of immigration between the two
countries.
"Until
2000, I would say there was no migration, and since then it has been limited,
mostly via marriage," says Damien Kingsbury, a Melbourne professor who
specialises in politics and security in Southeast Asia, particularly
Timor-Leste.
Sydney
academic Amanda Wise wrote in 2004 that 20,000 citizens of Timor-leste had
migrated to Australia in the years since Indonesian occupation, half that
number had gone to Portugal, and smaller numbers had gone to Macau, Mozambique,
Canada, the United States, Ireland "and other parts of the world." In
other words, the numbers who had moved to Brazil were insignificant.
Timor-Leste's
Australian embassy puts the number in Brazil at about 500.
Even
with Brazil's reputation as an international football factory, it seems
doubtful that a community this small—if it exists at all—could produce so many
more quality players than the population based in Timor-Leste.
Neither
FIFA nor the Asian Football Confederation will say how the players in question
qualify to play for the team. An AFC spokesperson says all players are eligible
and verified to play, but cited confidentiality issues when asked to explain
how.
FIFPro,
the international players' union, says nothing prohibits federations from
releasing this information.
Repeated
attempts to contact Timor's FA, whether by phone or their Yahoo account, have
gone answered.
"A
wave of naturalization of players from Brazilian origin always sound suspicious
in football," says Antoine Duval, a senior research at the Asser Institute
for International & European Law, by email. "There is always a
possibility that the players in question have lived continuously for at least
five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of East Timor, but
this seems unlikely.
"In
any case, if the player in question has not reached the age of 23, the
acquisition of the new nationality will not have been made in accordance with
the (lineage) criterion."
Duval
says FIFA has "vowed to be strict on the implementation of these
requirements, especially in light of the upcoming Qatar World Cup and the
legitimate suspicions regarding the future Qatari team."
But the lack of
transparency over Timor 's Brazilians suggest
we may never know how diligently player eligibility is policed.
Jack Kerr - Vice Sports
Jack Kerr - Vice Sports
