The dream of a Greenland away trip is dead for now. On June 9th, at CONCACAF’s Extraordinary Congress meeting, the confederation’s membership voted unanimously against accepting Greenland’s application to join as its 42nd member. Greenland had previously submitted an application for membership in 2024.
CONCACAF did not give any further statement or explanation for the decision (there isn’t even an article announcing it on their website — just an article about the Congress as a whole). However, the head of the Greenland Football Federation, Kenneth Kleist, gave the following statement to The Athletic.
“We have received a brief letter from General Secretary Philippe Moggio with a rejection of our application to join Concacaf as the 42nd member,” …
“We will use the next 24 hours to evaluate our situation and discuss internally how we will process the decision – but for now we will state, that this is not a victory for football democracy, it does not make football accessible to everyone globally, and it shows that smaller nations are facing extreme difficulties in getting permission to play under their own flag.”
This indeed is a big setback for Greenland’s federation. Greenland is an overseas territory of Denmark and as such, while the territory has a great deal of autonomy and is mostly self-governing, the people of Greenland are full Danish citizens. Because they are a territory of another nation, Greenland is not eligible under the rules of UEFA, Europe’s soccer confederation, to join as their own national team (please pay no mind to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). Without membership in a confederation, Greenland cannot play in official international tournaments.
So Greenland sought to join CONCACAF, the confederation for North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, instead. After all, Greenland is generally regarded as geographically part of North America. CONCACAF does allow territories to join as independent members. For example, Puerto Rico is part of CONCACAF despite being a territory of the United States and despite Puerto Ricans having full American citizenship. So Greenland’s membership would have been consistent with the rules of CONCACAF.
Membership within CONCACAF would have allowed Greenland to field a national team to compete in the Gold Cup and Nations League as well as send clubs to the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Joining a confederation is also a prerequisite to apply to become a full FIFA member and gain eligibility to enter World Cup qualifying. Without membership, the nation is frozen out of international soccer, with players from Greenland forced to play for Denmark instead.
Source link
Add Comment