What Exactly Is The Deal With This NZ Football Eligibility Thing?
Deklan Wynne in action against Portugal at the U-20 World Cup (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
It struck like a hoax at first. The All Whites Under-23s had been disqualified from the Oceania Olympic qualifying final at the Pacific Games for fieldling an ineligible player. Us!? Surely not.
The news broke on the morning of the final. NZ Football immediately refuted the decision and tried to have the final postponed but instead it went ahead without us, Fiji defeating Vanuatu 4-3 on penalties after a scoreless match. Now it’s up to the lawyers to salvage any chance we have of competing at football in Rio next year. It’s a messy and complicated affair, muddied further by a general lack of definitive information.
But here’s what we know, based on reliable reports and the accounts of NZF CEO Andy Martin at his press conference.
First of all, the ineligible player was Deklan Wynne, a full international and recent NZ representative at the U-20 World Cup. He played in the opening game of this tournament against Papua New Guinea and then again in the semi against Vanuatu. A complaint was submitted after that semi-final match (on Friday) by Vanuatu, notification of that complaint was shown to the NZ team manager as he was getting onto the team bus to leave the ground and the full written complaint was sent to them the next day (Saturday). Apparently technological issues delayed that process a little bit.
Then on the morning of the final (Sunday), Oceania Football held a meeting where they determined that the kiwis were to be disqualified. NZ Football had no knowledge of that meeting until after it had concluded.
Deklan Wynne and coach Anthony Hudson briefly appeared before media upon arriving back in the country. They both spoke of disappointment and a statement from NZF stressed how they believed they had acted in “good faith” throughout the whole thing. Like, really stressed it.
NZ Football CEO Andy Martin (3 News/@3sport)
Then Andy Martin faced a press conference and we finally had a few answers to some burning questions. Albeit just a few because there was plenty that couldn’t be commented on because the lawyers are busy at work.
NZF has 15 days to file an appeal and that course of action is already under way. Whether there’s a chance to salvage the Olympic spot that we were targeting before the tournament is one thing, but there’s another issue at work here and that’s the precedent for player eligibility that it’d set because Wynne is not the only one who could have the finger pointed at him, he’s just the only one it’s happened to so far. Storm Roux and Sam Burfoot from this squad alone could fall under similar scrutiny.
A major focus, from the sounds of Martin’s comments at the presser, is that of the timing of the complaint. There were already problems with the eligibility process from the start because of the fact that this was an OFC tournament being held within a Pacific Games event. Effectively, there were two competitions going on. New Zealand was ineligible for the Pacific Games, others ineligible for Olympic qualification (non-FIFA or IOC registered nations such as Micronesia and Tahiti). So how they worked it was: there were two sets of semi-finals. Those eligible for the Olympics played their games (now concluded) and then those eligible for the Pacific Games played theirs (semis held on Wednesday). Meaning Fiji get straight back to work after winning the Olympic qualifying section on Sunday.
It’s definitely unorthodox, but it works as far as scheduling goes. The problems come from player registration. Who was responsible for that, the Pacific Games Council or Oceania Football? According to Martin, NZF filed registrations for each player in the squad and all were cleared. However OFC will go by the FIFA rules of eligibility and this differs to the PG charter. This is one of the main grounds for appeal: that the competition was being run by the PGC so FIFA rules didn’t apply therefore Wynne was eligible to play even if he’s ineligible to play at the Olympics. That line of thought is… well, heavily flawed. FIFA don’t cede control that easily, just read a newspaper to find that out. Pacific Games Council executive director Andrew Minogue has already confirmed that “players were always subject to FIFA eligibility”.
But while FIFA rules do apply, their disciplinary committee have designated the handling of this complaint to Oceania Football, as is their usual custom. It was an OFC event, after all (as well as a PG event, but they’re not the ones with the issue).
Still, NZF might have more luck arguing that the appeal should have been made when squads were submitted, so says Andy Martin. That’s the standard protocol, as it allows a team to replace any player under suspicion and avoids interrupting the actual football with messy situations like this one.
But none of that touches on the elephant in the room here: Is Deklan Wynne actually eligible to play football for New Zealand or not?
That’s where the lawyers come into it.
Deklan Wynne was born in South Africa and moved here as a 14 year old. He has no New Zealand lineage but owns a kiwi passport and keeps residence here. This is the statute that his selection is alleged to have breached:
And it has breached it. He wasn’t born here, neither were his parents or grandparents either. And at 20 years old it’s not even possible for him to have lived here 5 years since his 18th birthday. This ‘Article 7’ is the one that’s been waved around the internet like a white flag. Based on this, he is ineligible and that’s that.
The recourse comes from the previous article:
New Zealand Football believe that Deklan Wynne is eligible for the All Whites based on these criteria, specifically art. 6 par. 4. “Lived continuously on the territory of the relevant Association for at least two years”? Check.
Except that this all depends on Wynne having dual eligibility status, which (sigh) refers us to article 5:
Is Wynne a citizen “not dependant on residency”? Martin referred to him as a “permanent national”, but couldn’t elaborate on that. Again, lawyers and such. If that means his nationality isn’t dependant on residency then woohoo, appeal victorious. If all it means is that he voted for John Key, then hmm.
The other thing is how did this only now get noticed? The kid’s already played for the senior national team! Well, that happened because FIFA leave the responsibility up to the governing national association. In effect: It’s NZ Football’s job to make sure of these things. Yet at the same time, Martin has confirmed that both passports and birth certificates were supplied to FIFA before the Under 20 World Cup that Wynne competed at and there were no issues arising from that. Whether that’s because they saw him as perfectly eligible, because nobody appealed and therefore they didn’t care, or because there’s nothing FIFA like more than sweeping a possible scandal under the mat, who knows? To be honest, all are plausible.
One avenue that NZF could have travelled down that would have avoided all of this was applying for an exception. Based on similar global cases, FIFA absolutely would have granted one, it would have just been a matter of waiting a few months for them to bother getting around to doing the paperwork. Such dispensations are why Winston Reid, Michael McGlinchey and Tommy Smith are all All Whites – each of those three represented different countries at age levels. Plus they’ve made no secret of their recent scouring of the planet to find players with New Zealand eligibility (such as Themistoklis Tzimopoulos and Benjamin van den Broek, both with maternal links to NZ). So NZF is undoubtedly familiar with the system, they just didn’t believe they needed to take such measures in this case.
Take the recent example of Gedion Zelalem of the USA – recently seen on these shores at the U-20 World Cup. Ethiopian parents, German-born, represented Germany at age levels… now plays for America. He moved to the US at the age of 8, moved to London to join the Arsenal academy at the age of 16. He is not a permanent resident but he is a naturalised citizen. However he’s no chance of living the next five years (he turned 18 in January) in America because he’s off chasing his Premier League dream. So an exception was applied for. And granted within a few months.
This from Doug McIntyre for ESPN FC:
On the surface, FIFA's rule is reasonable: It was put in place to prevent a country from recruiting and naturalizing talented foreigners for the sole purpose of strengthening its national team -- a practice that has recently become popular in Qatar, for example. But the rule has also had the unintended consequence of impacting players from around the world whose acquisition of a new nationality had nothing to do with soccer.
For instance, a player who was naturalized as an infant or young child, long before showing any athletic aptitude, could in theory be prevented or at least delayed from playing for the only country they've ever known.
Deklan differs here in that he still lives in New Zealand and had done so continuously for more than two years at the time of his first national participation. Players are allowed to change their youth nations so long as they are eligible for the other but as soon as you play a senior international tournament, then that’s it (this presumably includes WC qualifiers). Unless New Zealand is abolished and he becomes a refugee. Also, you can only change your FIFA nationality once. Deklan has only played senior friendlies so far, by the way.
Clearly NZF felt that his residency was enough to make him available. They’ve said as much. It all rests now on who wins the desperate battle between article 6 and article 7. Which in itself all rests on Wynne’s residency status. Once more (everybody join in): Lawyers.
This shouldn’t affect Wynne’s international playing future because they can always file for an exception in the future. Wynne moved here for non-football reasons, he’s not trying to cheat the system and New Zealand isn’t deliberately poaching talent and exploiting players. Neither will this affect the All Whites’ World Cup campaign. Relations with OFC, though, they could get frayed. Same with their fellow Pacific nations if Fiji end up losing a spot at the Olympics that they’ll feel like they earned fairly and squarely (they won the final, after all). To be honest, given that game’s already been played, we might need to let that one go and focus on Rugby Sevens at the Olympics instead.
The most important thing to do now is to clear this whole thing up for a young footballer who’s found himself caught in the middle of an administrative tug of war. Because this is not fair on him at all.