Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- FIFA has accepted this Thursday the file that the Malian boy Souleymane needed to play with his team from La Laguna (Tenerife) and has given instructions so that the humanitarian exception is correctly applied to the rest of minors arrived by boat who are in the same situation.
FIFA has confirmed this decision to magistrate Reyes Martel, the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Juvenile Judge who had already convinced him in November 2022 to change its regulations on international transfers of minors so that it adapts to the uniqueness of helpless children who are under the guardianship of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Junta de Andalucía, the Generalitat de Catalunya or the Community of Madrid, among other administrations.
“The child can play from today,” says the message that the judge has received, to which EFE has had access.
The boy, who had just turned 12 and is a declared fan of Vinicius Jr, has been training for months with a club in a neighborhood in La Laguna, but week after week he despaired when he saw that he could not participate in matches with his teammates. Because his file had to be accepted by FIFA and it never arrived.
For this reason, he decided to write a letter that has moved many football sectors: “Gentlemen of football, I am an 11-year-old boy who wants to play. I have been training for almost two years and working hard to be able to play soon with my teammates. They also want (me) to play and they are always asking me when I can.”
«I don’t understand why they let them play and not me, the only difference between them and me is that I am black and I was born in Africa. It is the least important thing, but in this case it is not like that, “lamented the boy, who was referred to by EFE by the fictitious name of Souleymane because his family prefers to keep him anonymous.
The case of this child is not isolated. Educators from centers for minors in the Canary Islands and Andalusia have confirmed to EFE that the children under their care suffer the same problem and the general director of Child Protection of the islands, Iratxe Serrano, has specified that they are trying to unblock numerous cases.
Everyone’s problem is the same: FIFA applies the regulations that it adopted years ago to prevent abuse of minors, when it detected that numerous European clubs had launched to sign promising youngsters in Africa, Latin America and Asia and There had been excruciating cases, with some children left to fend for themselves after failing to convince the teams that had brought them to Europe.
Last November, FIFA accepted at the request of Spain a change in the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players that extended the already existing “humanitarian” exception for refugees to those children who “have been recognized as vulnerable and require the protection of the State”, provided that the club that registered them does not have the status of professional.
Children under guardianship of public authorities
However, most of the registration applications that have since been submitted to its headquarters in Zurich by such clubs have been denied. The problem, now resolved, seemed to be in how the condition that they were children protected “by the State” was interpreted from Switzerland, because in Spain the powers in this regard are held by the autonomies, the regional governments. They are “the State” in what concerns the guardianship of a child declared to be helpless, whether he is Spanish or a foreigner.
There were also problems with the request by the highest governing body of world football for a letter from the parents on the reasons for “their transfer to Spain”, a letter that they could not send, because they do not meet the boys, but continue to in Africa, and in some cases they are not even located. Now, the child himself will be encouraged to write a simple explanatory letter.
“I can not believe it! I’m about to cry,” Souleymane’s foster mother, Elena Cotarelo, confessed to EFE that she decided to make the little boy’s desperate writing public because she no longer knew who to turn to.
For this reason and because he thought that with this step he could not only help him, but also make visible a problem that was causing anguish to many minors who see football as a channel for integration into the new society that has welcomed them, beyond the greater or lesser ability of each one with the ball. EFE