CFU ‘double standard’ has Alpha fuming

Apr 29, 2012 Sports

What seems to be a matter of ‘double standard’ has left Alpha Football Club fuming and making moves to be heard by Football’s World Governing body FIFA.
Club President Odinga Lumumba, in a brief meeting with several members of the media, revealed that correspondence with CFU General Secretary (ag) Damien Hughes among others, has informed that Alpha were no longer part of the CFU Club tournament’s second round due to a technicality that was never in the rules and that the club saw as very strange.
Sighting conspiracy, Lumumba informed that Alpha was in their fourth year of the Caribbean Football Union Championship, which is a qualification for the CONCACAF Club Championship and in turn the World Club Championship. He informed that Alpha were referred to as an amateur club and had to contest the qualifying rounds based on the CFU official’s decision. He pointed out that the rules of the tournament states that the top two teams from the group of four playoffs will qualify for the next round. Alpha finished second. Wikipedia website had just last week stated that Alpha had qualified to play in the next phase of the competition against teams from Trinidad, Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico.
However, according to Lumumba’s reference to several emails, they were informed that some of the other groups had three teams and only their group had four teams, hence the club’s fourth game was nullified and the points acquired were withdrawn. The original setup was geared for four teams in each group.
Lumumba further went on to state that the ‘new rules’, which suddenly appeared, allowed two Haiti teams to qualify from their group after both beat the other foreign team, then played to a ‘questionable’ draw in their match allowing both qualification. He noted that this raised eyebrows. The original rules of the tournament allowed for the advancement of the top two clubs in the group playoff to the next round. If it was known that Alpha’s group had four teams and the rules had to be changed, why the teams involved weren’t notified of this before the group matches were played was the question being asked?
Lumumba also disclosed that teams from Antigua & Barbuda and Puerto Rico were not involved in their home Leagues, questioning how they could have qualified to be a part of the CFU tourney and also advance ahead of Alpha.
The Alpha Boss said they will challenge this new ruling and have written to the Guyana Football Federation, who in turn has forwarded questions to the CFU on the matter and are awaiting their response. He also stated that they will take the matter to FIFA and also alert Caribbean Governments of what is going on through CARICOM.
He stated that if by Tuesday they are not reinstated they will be forced to take other steps on the matter, which smacks of conspiracy.

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CFU ‘double standard’ has Alpha fuming

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