On September 18, 2020, the 70th Congress of the Fèderation Internationale de Football Association (“FIFA”) [1] was held electronically, in which, among other measures, a series of amendments to the FIFA Statutes were approved and the Regulations for the Application of the Statutes ], whose entry into force took place with immediate effect after its approval on September 18, 2020 , and which have been incorporated into the different regulatory bodies through FIFA Circular No. 1732 dated September 23, 2020.
Among these modifications, this article addresses the amendments to articles 5 to 9 of the Regulations for the Application of the FIFA Statutes (the “FIFA RAE”) in relation to “Eligibility to play for national teams” and which were previously included under the heading «criteria for the call to participate with the national teams».
In summary, with the aforementioned amendments, FIFA has tried to fill the existing legal gaps and gaps detected based on practical experience and the casuistry of recent years in this regard.
FIFA notes that the amendments essentially seek to:
Define ambiguous and confusing concepts (on which the federations constantly request clarification); Incorporate and codify the jurisprudence established by the sole judge of the Players’ Status Commission (“CEJ”) (in order to provide legal certainty); Introduce three (3) additional exceptions to the general prohibition that prevents changing federations [8] (based on proposals from member federations and jurisprudence); Regulate the situation of stateless footballers.
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