The Ecuadorian Football Federation was, on November 14, the last to register with FIFA the list of its 26 chosen to compete in the Qatar 2022 World Cup. The delay -which was then believed to be motivated by some strategy commercial – occurred because there was a long and heated discussion between the coach Gustavo Alfaro and the FEF leadership over a name: Byron Castillo. The coach insisted on including the defender on the World Cup roster and his bosses rejected that intention. In the end, the position of the members of the federation board prevailed.
Gustavo Alfaro ‘decided not to continue’ as Ecuador coach
How much did this situation weigh on the decision that the Argentine has made not to renew to serve a second term in charge of the National Team? If it is not the main one, when Alfaro considers that his freedom to choose was limited, it would at least have had a noticeable influence on the trainer’s subsequent relationship with Francisco Egas, president of the FEF.
Gustavo Alfaro, a coach who instills fear in the players
“They were ten difficult hours,” Alfaro later recounted about the meeting with leaders in which the payroll for Qatar 2022 was discussed. He stressed to the media the reasons for the integration of the list of 26 from Ecuador: “It is the choice that I have, is it the right that I have to choose, or do I not have the right to choose? It is my right to choose, so I choose the players according to what I see”.
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Did Alfaro resign before the World Cup because of the Castillo issue? Mario Canessa Oneto, columnist for EL UNIVERSO, confirmed to this newspaper this Thursday what he revealed in his program commentatorsradio Caravanwhat he said almost two months ago about what happened between Alfaro and the Federation’s board, due to the position of each of the parties on the right side.
‘Ecuador was not his priority’
“Through a very good source, who for me has all the credit, and who was also at that meeting (on November 14), I learned that Alfaro made his position available to Francisco Egas. That’s not giving up, but it’s pretty much the same thing. The coach insisted that Byron Castillo be part of the World Cup roster, but the leaders objected to the footballer’s presence,” says Canessa, who for several decades presided over the FEF Selection Committee.
Canessa comments that she does not believe that the Castillo case is what started the estrangement between Alfaro and his employers. “Six months before the World Cup, the coach avoided discussing his renewal. ‘We’ll talk later’, he told them. The World Cup for Ecuador ended (44 days ago) and he publicly announced, in the press conference, after the defeat against Senegal, that he was going to take some time to analyze his future. The truth is, I think that for Alfaro his continuity with the National Team was not a priority ”.
On November 29, after the 2-1 defeat against Senegal, and sentencing the elimination of the Tricolor in the group stage of the World Cup in Qatar, Alfaro declared this at a press conference: “Honestly, I need time, I need time to find out what I am going to make my professional career, what decisions am I going to make. I don’t think this is the time to analyze it, at some point we had spoken with the Federation (about renewing), we agreed to meet after the World Cup to thank each other and to see what we do or what we don’t do”.
‘Avoid risks’
On November 14, Ecuador was, until 5:30 p.m., of the 32 teams classified for the World Cup, the only one that had not informed the conformation of its payroll. Resolving the inclusion of Castillo implied a prolonged deliberation (the deadline was November 15 and due to the time difference with Switzerland, headquarters of FIFA, the deadline for the FEF was about to end).
On November 9, Carlos Manzur, vice president of the Federation, referred to the probable consequences of taking Castillo to Qatar on radio Caravan. “The duty of the leaders is to tell the coach (Alfaro) if he can take him or not (Castillo). Whether he wears it or not is up to him. We are in analysis to finish consultations. In my personal vision, a collegiate (Manzur is a lawyer), we do not want to take risks. The logical thing is to take the time for that. The limit is Monday (November 14), when the payroll must be delivered.
On November 8 there was a sentence that put Castillo’s presence in the World Cup in check. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS, acronym for Tribunal Arbitral du Sport, in French) confirmed that the Tricolor could participate in Qatar 2022. The resolution was made after analyzing the allegations presented by the Chilean and Peruvian federations regarding the nationality of Castillo ; however, he announced economic and sporting punishments for national football. In the second aspect, the sanctions will be fulfilled in the next qualifiers, towards the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
That Castillo will play against Qatar, the Netherlands or Senegal in the World Cup meant the latent danger, according to the results, of a challenge by the rivals of the Tricolor.
CAS ruling
This eventuality was not unreasonable because the TAS, the highest instance of sports justice on a planetary level, detailed the causes of the punishment, referring to “false information” in the Byron Castillo document:
“The FEF violated article 21 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code by using a document that contained false information. For cases of counterfeiting, FIFA does not refer to national law. Consequently, for FIFA, a decision by the Ecuadorian judicial authorities regarding the falsification of the player’s passport is not necessary to establish that the document is false, in accordance with article 21 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code. In the present case, although it is true that the player’s Ecuadorian passport was authentic, the information contained in said passport was false. Specifically, the refereeing team was convinced that the player’s place and date of birth in the player’s passport were incorrect since the player was born in Tumaco, Colombia, on June 25, 1995. Consequently, the refereeing team considers that the FEF is responsible for an act of forgery pursuant to article 21, paragraph 2 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, even if the FEF was not the author of the forged document, but simply used it”. (D)
Source: Eluniverso
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