The action of the Football Association of Armenia in the Futsal World Cup qualifiers is astonishing. Uefa will not decide on the sanctions caused by the cancellation of the Finland match until next year.
The Finnish men’s national futsal team’s last World Cup qualifying match was canceled in an exceptional way. The Football Association of Armenia announced that it will not send a team to Finland for the match planned for December 20.
There’s quite a mess brewing behind the scenes. In futsal, the away team takes care of their own accommodation and travel to the venue. Representatives of the home team help with transportation and other running matters on site.
There were no requests from the Armenian Federation regarding, for example, training schedules, although the Football Association asked about it several times.
– Then there was a laconic message from there that our national team would not be playing in Finland, Palloliitto’s futsal manager Jyrki Filppu tells Urheilu.
On the eve of Independence Day, the Football Association received an official document about Armenia’s decision upon request.
– The European football association Uefa instructed to send a message to Armenia that without an immediate answer, the arrangements for the match will be canceled, says Filppu.
There was never an answer and on Friday the final decision was made to cancel the match. About a thousand tickets had been sold in advance for the match, so the cancellation will cause financial harm to the Football Association.
– Our interest is to move the matter forward. Costs have already been incurred, not all of which we can recover. The final result remains to be seen. There is no direct rule or guidance for such situations.
The situation is made even more special by the fact that, according to current information, Armenia is playing against Georgia on Friday, as usual, on its home field in Yerevan.
– We can only guess the reasons why Armenia misses the last match. The situation is incomprehensible and unsustainable, says Filppu.
Much more has happened behind the scenes in Finland’s World Cup qualifying group. The first meeting between Finland and Armenia, as well as both matches in Georgia, have been ruled as Finland’s 5-0 wins because of the unrepresentable players used by the opponents.
In theory, Finland still has a chance to grab a direct place in the qualifying group by beating Portugal by more than four goals on Friday. Even a smaller victory will be enough if Portugal does not beat Georgia in its last match. If this happens, however, the race venue would not be allowed to celebrate until later this year.
According to Filpu, UEFA’s disciplinary committee will meet next time only after the turn of the year. Before that, no decisions will be made about the effects of Armenia’s handover on the standings. There are three options for this case in Uefa’s qualification rules:
1) The match is judged as a loss for Armenia
2) All matches of Armenia in the group are void
3) Let’s consider other solutions
Filppu does not see the third option as likely, whatever the other solutions might be. The problem with canceling all matches is that at the same time, the comparison of the best group runners-up for further qualification would be messed up. The four best second-placed teams from the five groups will play in the World Cup play-off in April.
– In that case, the most obvious thing is that all the matches of the fourth-placed teams in all the groups will be invalidated in the comparison of the second places. That’s how we get to a fair procedure, Filppu says.
Finland will face Portugal in the away match of the Futsal World Cup qualifier on Friday. Live broadcast on TV2 and Areena from 21:20.