ISL, AIFF Violate Many FIFA Statues, But Who Cares?

With loads of money and muscle power, ISL and AIFF have been violating many FIFA Statues. But then, who cares?

The governing bodies of the most popular sport on Planet Earth – soccer — have no qualms of permitting their own statues to be violated.

And the bodies involved are the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the All India Football Federation (AIFF).

It is the duty of the national and the continental federations to follow FIFA Statues. But with FIFA itself not hauling them up for not doing so, they have been having a field day in toying with soccer in India. The situation in some other Asian nations is not different either. Europe and South America are all too powerful. Yet, they do not violate them as much as the AIFF has been allowed to do.

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Why FIFA and AFC are not willing to ask the AIFF to toe the line, is not difficult to guess given the rampant corruption in these bodies.

Therefore those with bags of money and who promote the Indian Super League (ISL) are twisting the arms of all and sundry to have their way. This body, IMG-Reliance pays the AIFF about Rs 90 crore per year as grant. Football Sports Development Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of the IMG-Reliance joint venture, is the company behind the show. Rather than developing football, they are ruining Indian football in trying to give some cheap publicity to some good-for-nothing but moneyed individuals and celebrities.

According to Article 14, Rule 1, of the FIFA Statues, Member associations have the following obligations:

1. a) to comply fully with the Statutes, regulations, directives and decisions of FIFA bodies at any time as well as the decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) passed on appeal on the basis of art. 57 par. 1 of the FIFA Statutes;
2. d) to cause their own members to comply with the Statutes, regulations, directives and decisions of FIFA bodies to manage their affairs independently and ensure that their own affairs are not influenced by any third parties in accordance with art. 19 of these Statutes.

The AFC and the AIFF violate all of these provisions.

Article 20 states that every member association shall ensure that its affiliated clubs can take all decisions on any matters regarding membership independently of any external body. This obligation applies regardless of an affiliated club’s corporate structure.

In any case, the member association shall ensure that neither a natural nor a legal person (including holding companies and subsidiaries) exercises control in any manner whatsoever (in particular through a majority shareholding, a majority of voting rights, a majority of seats on the board of directors or any other form of economic dependence or control, etc.) over more than one club whenever the integrity of any match or competition could be jeopardized.

All decisions are being taken by IMG-R and not the AIFF. This has been admitted by the AIFF’s Advisor and former India captain Taichung Bhutia.

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As per the Regulations Governing the Application of the Statutes, Clause 9, !, on SPORTING INTEGRITY states that a club’s entitlement to take part in a domestic league championship shall depend principally on sporting merit. A club shall qualify for a domestic league championship by remaining in a certain division or by being promoted or relegated to another at the end of a season.

Clubs are not allowed to even change their headquarters. The AIFF is wanting just that.

ISL has no promotion-relegation system and even the I-League violates this by giving a three-year holiday from relegation to new clubs joining in.

In REGULATIONS on the Status and Transfer of Players it states that these regulations lay down global and binding rules concerning the status of  players, their eligibility to participate in organised football, and their transfer between clubs belonging to different associations.

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The use of the Transfer Matching System (TMS) is a mandatory step for all international transfers of professional male players within the scope of eleven-a-side football, and any registration of such a player without the use of TMS will be deemed invalid.

But ISL has player auctions and no transfer, let alone the use of the online TMS. How is it allowed?

Clubs must use TMS for international transfers of players. But they bring in players through an auction process carried out by IMG-R and AIFF themselves.

All these violations are blatant but no one cares as long as the cash boxes are jingling. That has become the bottomline.

FIFA Statues? Oh! What’s that?

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