September 12 – Brazilian-born Santos Monteiro Junior Wanderley’s lust for international football travel seems to have caught up with him and his latest club, UAE’s Al Nasr, with the club being forced to forfeit their AFC Champions League quarter-final first-leg match against Qatar’s El Jaish.
Wanderley signed for Al Nasr in the summer from Sharjah and had been registered with the AFC as an Asian player as a result of the documentation.
He scored twice on his debut for Nasr in their 3-0 victory over El Jaish in the first leg of their Asian Champions League (ACL) quarter-final tie last month, only for Indonesian state authorities to announced that Wanderley’s Indonesian passport was a “forged or falsified” document.
“According to the regulations (Article 26.4.3), any player participating in the ACL shall be deemed ineligible if the AFC determines that any document submitted during registration is false,” said an AFC statement.
Indonesian officials claim that Wanderley has never even been to the country.
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Disciplinary Committee ruled that Al Nasr violated Article 57.1 of the AFC Disciplinary Code by fielding an ineligible player.
“Article 24.6.3 of the competition regulations provides that a player is deemed ineligible if the AFC determines that any document submitted during registration is false. The Committee held, on the basis of information received from various state authorities and after analysing the case file, that the Indonesian passport submitted to register Wanderley was false,” said an AFC statement.
The AFC said the investigation into the parties responsible for the forgery or falsification of the passport is continuing.
Al Nasr (UAE) were also ordered to pay a fine of $1,000. Enough to put Wanderley on a flight to his next country, but which one and with which passport?
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