Next season, Rangers of Talca, Chile, will be taking team photos as a second division side, thanks to a little nudge from FIFA, FFC, and ANFP.

View full size photo »

Here in the States, we're coming off an extended holiday weekend. I hope everybody had a healthy and happy Thanksgiving.

For our friends in Chile, the weekend may have ended happy, but it started with the kind of paranoia-inducing turmoil that's commensurate with the threat of World Cup expulsion.

In case you missed it, Chile was threaten by FIFA with exclusion from World Cup 2010 because one of its domestic clubs filed suit against the football league.  The suit came after the club incurred a three point penalty for using too many foreign players in a November 8 match.  News broke that Chile might be out of the World Cup after FIFA sent letters to all involved saying it would consider such action if, by Thursday's meetings in South Africa, the dispute was not resolved.  The next day, all was right with the Chilean footballing world as the penalized club had been moved off its legal stance.

No, that's not supposed to make sense, and even after further discussion with people who know a lot more about South American football than myself, I still sit with a furrowed brow thinking about the Chilean national team members at home next June because a club sued the league.

With your permission, allow me to make you as disconcerted as me:

If you have any more insight on this story or the ideas below, use the comments or email me.  Weird stuff.

The Backstory

Let's back-track to November 8, the last day of the Chilean Clausura. 

Rangers, a club from just south of Santiago, traveled to the far north to face Cobreloa with their Primera División life on the line.  In the combined table of Apertura and Clausura results - used to determine who gets relegated - Rangers were tied for 13th in the 18 team league.  They weren't safe from falling to fifteenth and one of the two relegation playoff spots, but they did control their own destiny.  Any result would see them safe.  The only way they would get relegated (so it was thought) would be to lose, have both Nablense and Cobresal get results, and then lose in their relegation playoff.

Notice that "so it was thought" I threw in there?

In that Sunday match at Cobreloa, Rangers were painfully thrown into the relegation battle.  A fourth minute own goal from Argentine defender Ezequiel Bretiz was the match's only tally, handing Cobreloa a 1-0 win.  That result combined with draws from Nablense and Cobresal saw Rangers fall to 15th place.  A playoff with Palestino appeared imminent.

Little did Rangers know that coach Oscar del Solar had thrown a wrench into the club's survival plans.  At halftime, Solar brought on Argentine attacker Luis Ojeda for Chilean midfielder Luis Rojas. 

If it seems like I'm going out of my way to list the players' nationalities, that's because Chile plays with a 6+5 rule that limits clubs to a maximum of five foreign players on the pitch.  Ojeda, along with Bretiz, Paraguayan Roberto Bonet, and Argentines Mariano Celasco, Eduardo Dos Santos, and Pablo Vranjican gave Rangers six foreign players.

On November 13, the Chilean league (ANFP, Asociación Nacional de Fútbol Profesional) enforced a three point penalty upon Rangers, pushing them to 35 points and into 17th place - direct relegation.  With 36 points, Curicó Unido moved into 16th.  What was a mathematical improbability going into the Clausura's last round became technical reality.  Rangers were going down.

Unfortunately for Rangers, Chile, CONMEBOL, FIFA, and sanity-craving footy fans, this relegation story had a huge arc.  You don't go from within one point of safety to direct relegation without accumulating some bad feelings. 

The bad feelings Rangers accumulated led them to file in suit in a Talca court.  Their claim sought to have their relegation reversed. 

On Thursday, the court ordered a suspension of the relegation playoffs pending resolution of the case.  That's when FIFA stepped-in.

In response to a request for guidance from the Chilean federation, FIFA said that Chile's national team could be excluded from the World Cup should Rangers persist with their action.

If you're confused as to what a domestic football dispute has to do with the Chilean national team, FIFA, or the World Cup, then you're one of sane ones.  If you're surprised, then welcome to international football.  Things like this happen, unfortunately.

Article 62, Section 2 of the FIFA statues specifically prohibits the use of "ordinary courts of law," with the only court recognized by FIFA being the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).   Article 64 authorizes FIFA to enact discipline.  The big question here is why FIFA was threatening to expel Chile from the World Cup, such a jaw-droppingly-drastic measure to deal with this situation:  a civil court filing by a relegation-entangled team.

The Mindset of FIFA

FIFA is guaranteed to react, often poorly, when something threatens its power. It's an understandable move of overcompensation, from a governing body whose authority will always be tenuous.

At its core, FIFA is an organization whose legitimacy is tied to the acquiescence of its members.  That's not exactly law, and it's subject to chance with the changing predilections of the footballing world.

With such flimsy justification, you can't blame FIFA for being quick to react to the intervention of government.  Absent any legal basis for power, government intervention undermining power is FIFA's worst nightmare.  To counteract the threat, FIFA has Article 62, Section 2, a flimsy directive that would be unlikely to stand-up against any appeal to fairness brought to the CAS.

Ironically (given their sensitivity), FIFA has few means of recourse when a one of its members' clubs steps out of line.  In typical international soccer fashion - where it is common to use the empty stadium as a means of punishing clubs and their supporters - FIFA punishes what it can, in whatever proportion (or disproportion) it wants, and uses fairness only in so far as it meets their ends (consolidating power).

This Rangers situation is the perfect example.  Does Rangers - a relegation-battling club in Chile, about as far from Zurich as you can possibly get - pose any threat to FIFA?  Of course not.  Do the courts in Talca?  No.  Does FIFA benefit (either way) of Rangers get relegated?  Let's hope the organization isn't that weak.  So why even get involved? 

There are a few reasons.

In addition to being asked by the Chilean federation, FIFA is given a rare chance to flex its muscles, aiding its legitimacy issues.  FIFA sent the expulsion threat knowing there would be little resistance from the AFNP.  The Chilean body was given license to cry, "Look what you're doing, Rangers!

"We haven't been to a World Cup since 1998, and your selfish act is going to take it away from us."

Never mind the fact that Rangers might have actually had a case.  I have no idea if they did. 

From what I know, it seems that the Chilean federation's punishment was within their means.  Rangers (in administration) where clinging to the technicality of ANFP notifying the club's staff (and not administrators) of the penalty, yet a civil court thought enough of Rangers' claim to issue an injunction.  If a judge eventually bought the argument that it's unfair to penalize the club three points from a match which they lost, Rangers might have been back in the relegation playoff.

And if that happened, would the roof have been pulled down on FIFA's head?  Would it have any effect on the legitimacy of Chile's qualification for South Africa?  Again:  Of course not.  Yet, acts like these - as unconscionably unfair as they seen in the abstract - make FIFA look like a strong organization.  If that strength helps either ANFP keep their house in order, some federations accept future 6+5-esque rulings, or FIFA itself leverage future World Cup bidding nations for more attractive and profitable packages, so be it.  FIFA wants to consolidate power wherever they can.

Picking and Choosing Battles

And while FIFA can consolidate that power by threatening to-be-relegated Chilean clubs, you would never see Zurich take such an aggressive stance against a bid European club.  Where was FIFA's sanctioning Italy during Calciopoli?  When Marseille and Valenciennes conspired to assure Marseille's 1993-94 Ligue 1 title, where was FIFA cracking down?  These are examples of major scandals at the top of some of the most talented leagues in the world.  Why weren't these federations told to get their act in gear?

The biggest reason is the club versus country debate.  As with any profession, the ability to make money - be it as a business or as am employee - is often decisive, and in the business of international football, the clubs have all the money.  It's one thing to pick a fight with Club Social de Deportes Rangers from Talca, Chile.  It's another thing to fight Juventus FC or Olympique de Marseille, or all-forbid clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, or Manchester United.  These clubs have come together before (most recently, the G-14) and will do it again if they feel FIFA is overstretching its bounds.

In South America, the governing bodies have fewer checks.  Somebody like Julio Grondona - the president of the Asociación de Fútbol Argentino, and Senior Vice-President of FIFA - can act unabated.  Earlier this year, he put a halt to Argentina's Apertura while the government bailed-out failing clubs with a new television contract.  Relative to stopping an entire Argentina season, getting Rangers to drop their case was easy.  All it took was one call from the ANPL to the Harold Mayne-Nichols at the FFC (Federación de Fútbol de Chile), who then called Grondona.  Whether Grondona even needed to consult Sepp Blatter (the consultation usually goes the other way around) is questionable.

If that chain of events happened, of course.  I'm only speculating.

Rangers has dropped their case, and who knows:  They could have won it.  True, Rangers screwed up by subbing on a sixth foreign player, and it appears the Chilean league has made a fair decision, but what happens when a club in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, or Venezuela has to deal with an unfair decision from their league?  There is no G-14 in South America, and when an actor like Grondona can get an Argentine government bailout for his domestic league clubs, it's unclear how effectual a South American clubs' union could be.

FIFA has to pick-and-choose their fights along with the places where they're fought, but when it comes to disputes like this weekend's in Chile's, the little bit of playground bully comes out of The Beautiful Game's governing body.  In this case, the bully threatened with a lot of bluster and bombast, and Rangers backed down.

You have to have thoughts on how FIFA, FFC, and ANFP handled the Rangers affair, or the tactics they use.  Share them in the comments, below.