November 14 – A bizarre case of deliberate deception has reached its conclusion with Brazil-born forward Santos Monteiro Wanderley receiving a backdated three-month ban and his United Arab Emirates club Al Nasr thrown out of the Asian Champions League for two years after both were found guilty of faking documents so he could play in the tournament.
Both parties admitted using a forged or falsified document to flout quota rules, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said in a statement.
Wanderley had signed for Al Nasr in the summer from Sharjah and had been registered with the AFC as being qualified as an Asian player, significant in that each club in the Asian Champions League is allowed to field three foreign players and one non-national from another Asian country.
But after scoring twice on his debut in Al-Nasr’s 3-0 victory over El Jaish in the AFC Champions League quarter-final first-leg, the Dubai-based club were forced to forfeit the game when Indonesian state authorities announced that Wanderley’s Indonesian passport was a “forged or falsified” document.
Wanderley has now been fined $10,000 and suspended for three months. Al Nasr has been fined $50,000, ordered to return $340,000 in prize money from this year’s league, and given a suspended two-year ban from the tournament.
The disciplinary panel of the AFC concluded the club “bore the majority of the fault for the violation, having deliberately obtained an Indonesian passport for the purpose of circumventing the 3+1 rule, and that its employees were not truthful in their collaboration with the AFC.”
The committee found Wanderley at fault for agreeing to be registered as Indonesian but not being an Indonesian national. His suspension was backdated to September 2.
Al Nasr have not qualified for next year’s AFC Champions League but they are now barred from the 2018 competition, meaning their earliest return will be 2019.
The AFC said it was investigating other suspected cases of players using fake passports while FIFA has an ongoing investigation into possible ineligible players.
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