I have to admit I wouldn’t normally dwell on an announcement by FIFA President Sepp Blatter that the FIFA Executive Committee had decided that the football association of a rocky 2.3 square mile enclave at the tip of the Iberian peninsula cannot be accepted as a member of FIFA.
After all, in a world struggling to get to grips with Ebola and gearing up yet again for war, how much does it really matter whether or not one more micro-state is allowed to act as cannon-fodder for the big boys in the 2018 World Cup qualifying competition?
As it happens, however, the question of the admission or non-admission of Gibraltar to world football’s governing body is not without a certain broader significance, at least as far as the rather recondite world of football politics is concerned.
To grasp why, we need to turn to Article 26 of the FIFA statutes, where it is stated that a proposal to amend said statutes “shall be adopted if approved by three-quarters of the members present and eligible to vote”.
Turned on its head, this means that a proposal falls if opposed by a quarter of members present and eligible to vote, plus one.
There are currently 209 football associations affiliated to FIFA, making the minimum number of votes necessary to block a proposed statute amendment, if everyone shows up, 53.
This just happens to be the exact number of FIFA member-associations in the European zone that constitutes UEFA’s sphere of activity.
If, in other words, UEFA President Michel Platini has the support of every European FA (admittedly far from a given), and if all are present and correct, then the Frenchman is one of two confederation heads who could conceivably mobilise the voting power to block changes to FIFA’s statutes. The other is Issa Hayatou, President of the African Football Confederation (CAF), which, since the admission of South Sudan, has become just the largest confederation, with 54 members.
The arrival of Gibraltar, besides putting Europe back on a par with Africa, a largely symbolic matter, would give the Europeans that extra little bit of flexibility, ensuring that they retained a theoretical veto even if one European member were absent or temporarily ineligible.
I should make clear that I am not suggesting for a moment that such arithmetical calculations have any bearing whatsoever on anybody’s stance on the merits of Gibraltar’s application for FIFA membership. But this would be a consequence of Gibraltar – or for that matter Kosovo – being welcomed into the FIFA fold.
The Executive Committee’s decision is not, by the way, the end of the matter since, as has been reported, the Gibraltar Football Association is “extremely disappointed” and is preparing to take its case to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
And, while I may be splitting hairs since Congress nearly always does Blatter’s bidding, it seems to me pretty clear from the statutes that membership is ultimately a matter for Congress and not the Executive Committee: to wit, Article 9 – “The Congress shall decide whether to admit, suspend or expel a member.”
The Executive Committee does have a role: to wit, Article 11 – “The Executive Committee shall request the Congress either to admit or not to admit an association.”
But it looks like, technically, the decision is in Congress’s, not the Executive Committee’s, gift.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.