Taking it too far with Timor-Leste

Today we're continuing the theme of recent articles here on WWOFM by looking at international eligibility (I promise the next article will be about something different); as we've already established, lots of countries rely on "naturalised" players, those whose ties to the country they represent have developed from living there. However few countries have relied on natuarilisation quite as much as República Democrática de
Timor-Leste.

In an effort to establish themselves as a football force in the region, if not the world, the country also referred to as East Timor developed a reliance on Northern Irish Brazilian players beginning in 2012, but bad publicity over the ensuing period forced a change of heart three years later:

'Timor Leste will be without seven naturalised Brazilian players for the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Asian Cup joint qualifiers visit of UAE on Thursday night.

The decision to drop their oversea-born legion was taken by Timor Leste Football Federation (FFTL) following a concern from some Timorese who complained to the prime minister, the prosecutor general and the minister for justice regarding the naturalisation program.

“Why will these seven players not play? Good question, because I don’t know. I am only the coach. Of course, I prefer my team to be strong,” said the team coach, Fernando Alcantara, who could not explain the details on decision.

“But they are changing the project in Timor Leste with only new and young Timoreans playing. My objective is to make a good match and give experience for my younger players.”'

Unfortunately without these players results went south quite dramatically with the Lafaek (or "The Crocodile" as their nickname translates to English) losing to the United Arab Emirates by a disappointment scoreline of 8-0 in Novemeber 2015. 

Things failed to improve in the next match, with a 10-0 loss to Saudi Arabia.

This left the national FA (the Federação de Futebol de Timor-Leste, or FFTL for short) with a difficult dilemma. They needed their Brazillians back, but they couldn't go back on their pledge to only recruit players that had demonstrable blood links to the country.

The solution? Forge their birth certificates of course!

Birth and baptism certificates were doctored by football chiefs in a tiny southeast Asian country to allow a dozen Brazilians to play for them.

[...]

They found the documents were doctored to falsely show the players had East Timorese heritage, with one or both of their parents being born in the country.

As you might imagine, the sudden reappearance of players who'd previously been dropped didn't exactly fly under the radar and it took only two months for the Asian Football Confederation to find the FFTL of bringing the game into disrepute, proactively exclude them from Asian Cup 2023 qualifying, fine them $20,000 US Dollars and ban their general secretary for a period of three years.

Which is one way of getting world-wide recognition, but undoubtedly not the kind they were originally hoping for...