Panama made an enquiry, not a protest, after the fact surfaced in social media. The answer by FIFA was just to acknowledge they received the enquiry about the elegibility of Gimenez and that they refuse to comment (neither "no" or "yes") using as excuse art. 14, par.3. (time limit of 1 hour to protest).
But NZ is an affected third party,as such not bounded by the time limit (this is applied only to the teams involved in the match in question) and as such it can still demand FIFA to launch disciplinary measures against Mexico regarding Gimenez participation in the game against Panama, as the outcome of a forfeit, as FIFA regulations mandate in case of inelegible player, is a different playoff rival.
I know FIFA would try to avoid it, But NZ can appeal to CAS, in order to clarify the matter of the nature of Argentina participation in South America U-20 tournament in Ecuador 2001. In regulations of similar tournaments declares in art.1 that CONMEBOL organizes the tournament in behalf of FIFA, and art. 2 say participants are the 10 federations of CONMEBOL. For me that means every match in the tournament is official.
Regarding the participation of Mexico in Copa America and Brazil in Gold Cup, they are guests of a DIFFERENT confederation of the one organizing the. tournament. This is NOT the case of Argentina.
This matter has to come an impartial court to decide. Let CAS sort it out.
And if the ruling comes too late, at least make FIFA pay compensation to both NZ and Panama for the damage incurred by its "oversight"
So, is up to the NZ football community if they want to lose this opportunity and allow FIFA to keep a double standard.
Sorry to repeat, I did not quote properly in the first oneWe aren't really the types to try and win on a technicality, however if this is true we will moan about it in bars for weeks.