The president of the Ecuadorian Football Federation (FEF), Francisco Egas, announced that his office from this Wednesday is “in World mode”, but it will be the lawyers who deal with the sanction to the country issued by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS) as a result of the ‘Byron Castillo case’.
Egas said he was sure that the FEF will prove that they acted in good faith and that there is no reason for a sanction. “The TAS decision is controversial. The TAS is not the body to decide whether an official document from a country is valid or not,” Egas said in an interview with Quito-based Radio La Red.
“We certify the identity of the player over and over again and only then do we summon him,” he said in reference to the player, who has been denounced as having been a regular in the Ecuadorian team, despite having documents that certify his Colombian origin.
He insisted that the priority of the FEF and the national team is to give joy to the 18 million Ecuadorians at the World Cup in Qatar starting on November 20.
The CAS resolution determined that the FEF pay a fine of 100,000 Swiss francs, in addition to another 10,000 for the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) and 10,000 for the Chilean (FChF), which were the ones that demanded the intervention of the TAS, with the objective of trying to keep the quota obtained by Ecuador.
In the joint claim, The plaintiffs argued that Castillo used false documentation that accredited him as Ecuadorian, despite allegedly having been born in Colombia..
On his side, the Civil Registry, Ecuador’s identification agency, after an investigation process carried out a few years ago, ratified Castillo’s Ecuadorian nationality for which, for the last qualifying rounds, he was summoned by coach Gustavo Alfaro.
They see a contradiction in the TAS resolution
According to the directors of the FEF and Castillo’s lawyer, Andrés Holguín, there is a contradiction in the CAS resolution, because it first indicates that the player is “sumable” to join the Ecuadorian team, and then finds inconsistencies in the documentation presented.
Outside of the media scandal, the Ecuadorian team is undergoing a preparation process in Madrid, where it will play its last friendly match against Iraq, next Saturday, prior to the World Cup debut against Qatar (Group A), which is completed by Senegal and the Netherlands.
The final list of the 26 players from Ecuador will be presented next Sunday, according to Alfaro, while the vice president of the FEF, Carlos Manzur, indicated that it is being studied whether or not it is appropriate to summon Castillo after the TAS ruling.
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