Prince Ali to address FIFA 'passport rule' for VI
Speaking at a meeting held with officials of the British Virgin Islands Football Association today April 17, 2015 at the local FIFA/BVI Football Association office in Road Town, Prince Ali said the issue has come up for discussion during his engagement with the local football officials.
Players of the BVI national team have been barred from playing for the territory because they are not BVIslanders, as required by current FIFA rules and regulations.
“Yes, for sure a solution needs to happen. The President of the national association [Andy Bickerton] has raised this. It also came up at the national congress,” said Prince Ali.
Players must have the right to play for the team
“The fact of the matter is that it is a national association and if your players want to play for your team then your players must have the right to do so,” he said.
“I would wish to do as much as I could to make sure that happens. There are other countries and other places in the world where exceptions have been made to that reality so I would definitely want to see that happen here,” he said.
He said FIFA can do a lot more in terms of real support. “The important thing is that everybody has the ability to play football no matter where they come from but all basic needs need to be met, including facilities,” he said.
An absolute disgrace
Commenting on the passport issue, President of the BVI Football Association Andy Bickerton said, “The passport issue is a very unfortunate issue from the point of the development of football in the BVI because we run a youth programme from five years old so all players who join the programme, if they want to aspire to play for their national team then they should be given the opportunity to play for their national team.”
He said that it was “absolutely disgraceful” as “we had to play Dominica and we had six players who were belongers to the Virgin Islands, I think four of them were born here and spent their whole lives here and FIFA did not allow them to represent their country. I think that’s an absolute disgrace.”
He said as a result of this he brought the issue up with Prince Ali for his response “and also it was brought up at the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) congress and the President of the CFU and he challenged both Jeffrey Webb who is the President of CONCACAF and Sepp Blatter the President of FIFA to deal with this issue.”
Bickerton said the passport issue has caused the BVI national team to suffer results wise. “We suffered heavy defeats because of the problem of not being able to get our best players on the field,” he said.
Bickerton said it was “great” to have Prince Ali in the VI as it gave him the opportunity to see where the VI was in the development of its football and what the territory’s needs are. He said the development of the Greenland football facility, which the Prince toured earlier today, will enable the territory to move football forward quite significantly. “We see that as just the start…we said that we would like to develop facilities on Virgin Gorda in the very near future. We would also like to develop facilities for beach football,” he said.
'BVIFA a responsible body'
Bickerton said the BVIFA has continued to demonstrate that it is responsible and this is what FIFA needs to see in order to continue its support to the sport here. “I think the public will know based on our past record of what we have achieved in the last three or four years. We are a very responsible association and if we say we are going to do something we are going to do it,” he said.
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