A door that will not open, but quite the opposite, which is closed with seven padlocks. This is what the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) came to say this Thursday. The body led by Luis Rubiales took advantage of the extraordinary assembly held in Madrid to reply to the Basque Government and the Autonomous Federation, which on Tuesday traveled to Switzerland to present two separate briefs to UEFA and FIFA in which they demand that Euskal Selekzioa be recognized as one more selection, at the same level as Spain and France. “It is an unfeasible situation”, assured the director of International Relations, Jorge Mowinckel. Neither the president of the RFEF nor its general secretary, Andreu Camps, wanted to respond to the Basque delegation and limited themselves to having the refusal pronounced by a technician.
Camps, in any case, assured that they had knowledge of the trip of the Basque Federation to Switzerland “first through the media” and then “an email arrived at night”, when the news was already on the newspaper websites. Basque football representatives acknowledged this Thursday that the email was sent at 6:50 p.m., when they had already delivered the documents to FIFA and UEFA. The delegation of the Basque Government and the Federation of Euskadi was headed by the head of Sports of the Autonomous Executive, Jon Redondo, and by the president of the FVF, Jesús Mari Elustondo, whose mandate is about to end. The Basque representatives have given UEFA and FIFA a year to give them an answer. If it is negative for admission to international organizations, the idea is to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS).
Well, in this situation, the Spanish Federation assured this Thursday that the trip of the Basque delegation was not previously communicated to the team chaired by Luis Rubiales. The RFEF said that it had contacted UEFA and FIFA and that both organizations had sent them the same message: “No one has received the representatives of Euskadi.” The argument that the top leaders of European and world football have used is that they “only” meet “with the national federations” and not with any of the members that are part of the Spanish organization, as is the case of Elustondo, whose presidency It is subject to the RFEF. According to this account, both UEFA and FIFA would have slammed the Euskadi claims, backed by the Basque Government. In the statement that La Vasca issued on Tuesday evening, the attached images were taken outside the offices of international organizations. The Spanish Federation also recalled that both UEFA and FIFA require that to have a recognized team you must belong to an “independent country” that is recognized as such by institutions such as the UN.
Once the explanations of the Spanish Federation were known, the Basque Federation issued a note in the afternoon detailing a couple of aspects. He cites Kosovo as an example to reject the thesis that only an independent state can compete as a soccer team at the official level. And he says he is grateful that Luis Rubiales’ team has opened up to debate Euskal Selekzioa’s proposal. “The FVF will formulate, when appropriate, a possible and casuistic proposal that can serve the interests of both parties,” says the note.
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