DATE: 22nd of August 2014
CAN LUIS SUAREZ PLAY FRIENDLY GAMES WITH HIS
NATIONAL TEAM?
This post is
due to these days have been published news based on the words of Mr. Alejandro
Balbi, member of the Executive Commission of Uruguayan Federetion, who
represents Luis Suárez at the CAS, jointly with FC Barcelona lawyers.
These
declarations said that the player did not be able to be called for his national
team for the friendly games in Korea and Japan on 5th and 8th
October, because they “do not want to take unnecessary risks”. His reasons were
the following: “We do not have already the grounds of the judgment and the
sanction. Until we do not have the grounds of the ban we are not going to do
anything. The most convenient is not to call him, if we call him it is possible
that we receive a fine”. When Mr. Balbi talks about “a fin” he is referring to
the ban that the Uruguayan Federation would receive if Suarez would play those
games.
The
Uruguayan lawyer, cautiously, prefers do not have any problem in relation with
the ban to the footballer. But to eliminate the doubts, we are going to analyse
the FIFA’s ban and the CAS decision published as a press release the last 14th
August. Even though is not the decision with all of its grounds, as Balbi says.
First of
all and taking the first ban imposed by FIFA as a reference, the CAS overturns
the sanction related with the entrance to the stadiums (art. 21 FDC) and the
prohibition of taking part in any kind of football-related activity (art.
22 FDC) for a period of four months. This allows the player to train with his
team and teammates. The CAS understands that this punishment is excessive
because the penalty already exists on the offense, adding that also takes into
account the impact that can generate this in the player after the end of the
sanction. Upholding the proportionality of the ban of 4 months without playing
an official match, as well as 9 games with his national team.
In
relation to the ban of the 9 official games for his national team, the article
38.2.a) FDC is emphatic stating that if the penalty occurs in the FIFA World
Cup will be fulfilled "in the next official match representative team
affected”. That is, in the qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup. In this case, it
is not the case for the friendly games in Japan and Korea.
But the
"quid" of the issue and the reason because I suspect that the lawyer
of the Uruguayan Football Association seems so cautious, is the penalty is 4
months. The CAS in the first paragraph of its statement dispelled these doubts,
establishing the following: "However, the 4-month suspension will apply
only to official matches and no
longer to other football-related activities handler (such as training,
promotional activities and administrative matters)." This means that this
is applied to official matches exclusively.
These
facts lead us to the next step, the surveillance of the FIFA definitions about
what an “official match” is. The Regulation on Status and Transfer of Players
establishes the definition of “official match”, which is the following: “matches played within the framework of organised
football, such as national league championships, national cups and
international championships for clubs, but not including friendly and trial
matches”. This, carry us to take a look to the definition of “organised
football” (it is below the last on the Regulation): “association football organised under the auspices of FIFA, the
confederations and the associations, or authorised by them”. This
definition creates the necessity to go to know what FIFA understands by
“association football”, this meaning appears in the FIFA Statutes, “the game controlled by FIFA and organised
in accordance with the Laws of the Game”.
All of
this adding that the friendly game is celebrated in “FIFA date” and it is valid
for the Ranking FIFA we could conclude that it is an official game due to the
analogy, because the definition is too ambiguous in my opinion.
My
conclusion is that it is possible that based on the terminology used by the
rules in their definitions can be regarded as "official", the
international friendly match. However, the limits of each concept are not clear
enough. But taking in mind the precedent of the Spain-South Africa, where we
spoke about the the match as an official one, I think to avoid problems, the best
is consider the match as "official". Although the issue leaves me
doubts. I think FIFA should step forward or they shall make a press release
"ad hoc" clarifying this point about the case of Luis Suarez, or be
more specific defining an international friendly match. Just to avoid
misunderstandings.
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