April 12 – Equatorial Guinea have been thrown out of the 2020 women’s Olympic preliminary qualifying football tournament by FIFA after one of their players was found to have used two passports with conflicting details.
FIFA said it had evidence that Camila Maria do Carmo Nobre de Oliveira used two passports with different birth dates and two birth certificates showing different parental information. De Oliveira took part in several qualifiers for this summer’s Rio Games.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee held the Equatoguinean FA (Feguifut) liable for the use of a “forged or falsified” passport during last year’s qualifying tournament for Rio and fined them SFr40,000. “Two birth certificates containing divergent information regarding the player’s parental affiliation were also provided,” FIFA said.
The player herself was banned for the next 10 international matches for which she would be eligible and fined SFr2,000, warned and reprimanded.
“Further investigations related to the eligibility of several other players are currently ongoing,” said FIFA.
Equatorial Guinea did not qualify for the women’s football tournament after losing to South Africa in the final round, having previously beaten Congo and Nigeria.
The West African nation has a history of falling foul of the eligibility rules. The men’s team were kicked out of the 2015 African Nations Cup for fielding a Cameroon-born player who was not eligible to represent them in qualifying matches.
They were later re-instated in the tournament but only because they agreed to step in as hosts when Morocco controversially withdrew.
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