Fifa allowed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to compete at this summer’s World Cup despite reports suggesting an internal investigation found the country had fielded an ineligible player during qualifying.
The player at the centre of the matter is the goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi, who featured prominently for his nation at the tournament, including in the last-32 meeting with England. Mpasi was born in France and represented Les Bleus at youth level, and Fifa reportedly found that he had never completed the process of switching nationalities. No punishment was levied against the Congolese federation, Fecofa, as a result.
The Nigerian Football Federation had submitted a complaint over the DRC apparently fielding ineligible players during a World Cup playoff tie between the two nations, which the DRC won on penalties in November. Reporting by the New York Times and Le Monde indicates that Fifa investigators were aware of Mpasi’s situation before the DRC defeated Jamaica in a final intercontinental playoff round in March. Presented with a range of possible responses, including banning Congo from the playoffs, Fifa instead rejected the Nigerian complaint on the grounds that it had not been submitted within the necessary timeframe.
Nigeria appealed against that decision, and government representatives have suggested they could seek financial compensation. A member of the national sports commission, which regulates Nigerian sport, told ESPN: “Nothing has been decided yet, but we will seriously consider seeking compensation from Fifa for all of the economic losses this has cost Nigeria.”
Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation that counts Jamaica among its members, said it “takes player eligibility matters very seriously and expects the applicable regulations and procedures to be applied consistently and fairly in all competitions”. In a statement it asked that any “concerns regarding player eligibility” be “thoroughly reviewed and addressed through Fifa’s appropriate governance and disciplinary bodies”.
The developments will again raise questions over the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, who has faced heightened scrutiny amid a series of governance scandals. Fifa’s investigative teams operate independently and the president has no input into their proceedings, and Fifa is understood to have denied that Infantino played a part in the decision-making process over Mpasi. His name is nonetheless likely to remain in focus, owing to a former university associate, Véron Mosengo-Omba, being elected unopposed as president of Fecofa this May.
The news lands alongside a separate governance complaint. On Tuesday the Norwegian football federation confirmed it had submitted a three-pronged complaint to Fifa, covering the decision to overturn a red card awarded to the United States’ Folarin Balogun after a telephone intervention by Donald Trump, the Fifa peace prize, and the abandoned plan to sell a share in the World Cup to investors, known as the Fifa Forward Enterprise scheme. “Each of these cases must be assessed based on the facts of each individual case,” said the NFF president, Lise Klaveness. “At the same time, the cases point to a more fundamental question: has Fifa’s position, authority or influence been used in a way that was not appropriate, and if so, did the mechanisms that were supposed to prevent this function work as they should?”
Fifa, Concacaf, Caf, the Nigerian Football Federation and Fecofa were all approached for comment.