Deklan Wynne, centre, was the subject of a Vanuatu protest after playing in the Olympic qualification tournament semi-final.
New Zealand will miss out on a men's soccer berth at the Rio
Olympics unless their disqualification from the qualifying tournament in Papua
New Guinea can be successfully appealed.
The Oceania Football Confederation on Sunday upheld
Vanuatu's protest based on the assertion defender Deklan Wynne was ineligible
to play in Friday's semi-final, won by New Zealand 2-0.
An OFC committee disqualified New Zealand and declared
Vanuatu 3-0 winners, sending them into the final against Fiji in Port Moresby
on Sunday night.
The winners of the Pacific Games under-23 tournament will
contest next year's Olympics, with no second chance existing to qualify.
New Zealand Football said in a short statement it will
appeal the ruling.
The statement was issued about 1pm (NZT) - less than seven
hours before the final was to kick off - with no-one from the organisation
available for comment since.
"We strongly refute the ruling regarding the
ineligibility of the player in question and we will be challenging this
decision," chief executive Andy Martin said in the release.
The technical reason for Wynne's ineligibility was outlined
in a short OFC statement, which said New Zealand had transgressed FIFA
regulations related to residency.
Wynne, 20, was born in Kapstadt, South Africa but reportedly
moved to New Zealand as a child.
He lives in Auckland and has played for the Wanderers SC
under-20 team in the national domestic league since 2013. He holds a New
Zealand passport and has played three senior internationals for the All Whites,
making his debut against China last November.
However, the OFC has referred to the FIFA statute which says
any player not born in a country or without a parent or grandparent from that
country, needs to have lived there for five years after the age of 18. Wynne
isn't old enough to have done so.
Pacific Games Council (PGC) 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 PGC would learn from the issue and said it
hadn't put it off having the tournament played at future Games.
"Having the Olympic tournament here has got a lot of
people talking and that's just what we want," he said.
"Going forward we need to establish the ground rules
much earlier and learn from it."
0 comments:
Post a Comment