New Zealand U-23s - Quali Whites

How's this one, my mum was born in the UK when her parents were traveling, she came to NZ less than a year old, got her education here, her drivers license, her passport, worked here for years, paid taxes, etc. - then when she applied for her firearm license they realised that she was here illegally and tried to deport her.

So any kid that arrives here around age 5-6-7 (and lets be honest, they would have hardly any relationship to their country of birth for the most part) and may have played kids football in another country, cannot play any international football for NZ until 23??? That means a few kids can never play in an Olympics. That still just does not seem right. By the time you hit 22 you could well have lived here for 16-17 years and still be considered a foreigner.

and I thought Winston NZ First hated immigrants...

From what I can see it would depend on what FIFA counts as registered Footballer, I agree it sounds ridiculous, but that appears to be the way the rule applies to those who don't have Citizenship by birth (Born here, or Parent/Grandparent), that at the point where they register as a footballer if they don't have that nationality for FIFA purposes they must be in country for 5 years after 18th birthday, it's nuts, but it's clear why the rule was made after some dodgy citizenship occurances.

Rules make no mention of being registered as a footballer 

That's the key question.

Yeh, it does sound extreme that a kid moves country and then can't play till 23, but also bear in mind the contexts in which that rule change was made - certain wealthy countries were figuratively (and in some cases literally) trawling other places for talented footballers, some as young as ten, and then enticing them to move in order to boost the country's playing stocks... the kids would be taking massive risks, but driven by desperation/poverty, and sometimes with dodgy agents involved too... obviously the scenario with Deklan's migration is different (well, I assume it is...), hence why there can be exceptions granted... but that original context was real, and pernicious, and did need to be stopped as it was really immoral and problematic...  with all that in mind, the rules as they stand were designed to deter such actions in the future - and yet I kind of wonder how some of the "graduates" from the Aspire Academy end up playing for Qatar at such young ages...

THIS IS FUCKING DEPRESSING.   Would have been mightier pissed off if Vanuatu won the final.  Good luck to Fiji. 

The rules mention "Changing FIFA Nationality" - you don't have one of those til such time as you register as a Footballer from what I can tell, this is why Smith & Roux didn't need an exemption, but Wynne definitely would.

So it may be problematic for Wynne to get exemption (if he/authorities applied).

I am veering drastically from conspiracy to cock-up

Let's not forget the U17 WC qualification was played in Vanuatu, and I don' think Deklan Wynne was on the squad - so the first thing they think is whose this guy? Think NZF stuffed this one up.

According to the article (posted earlier) regarding Bernie Ibini, who moved to Australia when he was 1 and had gotten citizenship before he was 10, he had to get clearance from FIFA to represent Australia at age group level. It seems it doesn't have much to do with which country you are first registered for football.

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/ibiniisei-wins-...

Well who knows then, however the rule is, it still seems screwed up and not always applied the same then.

I am veering towards cock-up but influenced by confusing rules compounded by two different competitions being run within same setup.

at least Roy will be stoked

I was under the impression that Giggs had the option to play for England and chose to play for Wales. He could have applied for all kinds of things as he grew up in Manchester, shurely?

I thought we had established that there is no distiction between the rules of either competition? This is an Olympic qualifier and run under FIFA rules.

At the very least - this cockup has nothing to do with the fact that there's two competitions going on at once. We've violated FIFA rules.

It seems relatively straight forwards and happens all the time. Hopefully NZ Football did do it, as was said we were not given an opportunity to defend ourselves.

If NZF did not apply for international clearance then that is a huge cockup, I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Antony Hudson walked over this, his entire plan hinged around the olympics, and he is only trying to get us to the worldcup to put his name in the window for a bigger job. If he doesn't think we can do it because of an admin blunder then he will go.

If that were true Micronesia wouldnt have been able to take part as they are not a FIFA member nation. There were two competition, the Pacific nations cup and the Olympic qualifiers

Ugh, ignore the above, I understand what you are getting at.

If NZF had an exemption, and/or we hadn't violated the rules (cocked up epically) then NZF would have come out in the media and said as much.

Instead, they've come out in the media and said they're bunkering down with some of Smithy's mates to do their best to find a loophole where OFC have cocked up in exposing/punishing NZF for their cock ups.

Even if they are successful, the fact remains that two cock ups do not excuse a cock up.

This is a cock up.

Why throw a whole team out - why not stand the player ( unbeknownst to him for being in the wrong), down for the final with a fine for NZF?

Why punish a whole team, fan base,  for a regulation error. Why did Vanuatu wait till they had lost to use the info?

We need the Lt Caffey from A Few Good Men to handle this case, sue OFC, FIFA, IOC and PG for damages.

Good luck to Fiji - and as already said - good luck Roy Krishna.

Lastly - hope Declan has some good mates and he is being looked after - he will be feeling like shark shark and more shark.

The only thing that can save us is if FIFA had previously given Wynne clearance. If they had done so you would have expected NZF to have said so by now. Conversely, you have to wonder how Wynne got this far if he wasn't given clearance. I think we just have to see how it plays out but things don't look too good.

Even if we did mess up it seems likely OFC has done us one. They probably knew Wynne was ineligible but waited until the semis so we could be kicked out of the competition. If they did it earlier then we might have just lost 3 competition points and still went on to win the thing.

Hudson will walk .... this job is his great reputation builder and that just got demo'ed by NZF

He was older when he emigrated than some of the other players in this situation that have been used as examples in this thread.

Others were refugees, which may be dealt with differently?

I assume he played football in SA, not long after he came here he was playing in a rep U15 team.

If he was playing football in elite teams, for his age, in his previous homeland, who knows?

Because is against the rules. You have to play with elegible players and if you don't, then you get disqualified, simple as that. Of course is unfair for the rest of the team and Hudson himself but the rules are the rules and it seems we have broken them

I think nothing would have changed if Vanuatu used the info of Wynne before -if they even knew it by then-. We had already played him in other matches, so we would be given a forfeit in those as well, probably making NZ out of the competition

I thought he had only played in one game? We would have still gone through.

No, but there are some very interesting whisper from people who would know the facts.

"Pacific Games Council executive director Andrew Minogue released a statement expressing regret at any confusion which may have been caused by staging a Fifa tournament as part of the Pacific Games multi-sport event. Minogue said that the PGC would learn from the issue ... "Having the Olympic tournament here has got a lot of people talking and that's what we want."

source:  Uk Guardian : 'NZ thrown out of Olympic qualifying event....

"In the 2014 World Cup qualifying groups, ineligible players proved the biggest administrative problem for FIFA. Seven different African teams fielded players who did not have valid clearance, forcing FIFA to award 3-0 wins to their opponents. The penalized teams were Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Liberia, Sudan and Togo.

Africa was the only one of FIFA's six continental confederations which had issues with federations failing to get proper FIFA clearance for players."

"Had Myanmar known the Fifa ruling on eligibility, it is understood they could have appealed their 5 1 loss to NZ  and progressed through to the knockout stage at NZ's expense."

Ben Strang writing for www.stuff.

Just gets worse. We're looking 3rd world. When are we playing them again? Hope they treat us nice....

Does anyone really know the facts? After a whole day and a bit of journalists and fans trying to work it out, it seems like the answer still isn't clear. If that is the case, how exactly did OFC give the ruling and kick us out so quickly?