Player Eligibility Fiasco at the U-17 World Championships

Due to a horrendous misunderstanding between FIFA and the FFA, seventeen year-old striker David Williams has been ruled ineligible to play for Australia at the U-17 World Championships in Peru. Williams was a member of the Australian U-20 squad that failed to advance past the round robin stage of the U-20 WYC in Holland earlier this year. He never made it onto the field in Ange Postecoglou's conservative lone striker system. But due to his presence in the U-20 squad, Williams comes under a new FIFA ruling that bars players from backwardly participating in the world youth tournaments.

Williams is considered one of the stars of the U-17 team. Currently he is unafilliated with any A-League team, but Queensland Roar was known to be tracking him early in their roster preparations (currently Williams trains and plays with the Queensland Academy of Sport). He will almost certainly continue to represent Australia in the future. But for now, through no fault of his own he has been forced (by coaching decision and by administrative error) to miss out on two World Cups in the space of a few months!

How does something like this happen?!

As I understand the current FIFA regulations, Williams will thankfully be allowed to represent Australia again at the U-20 level. But the next WYC is two years away, and two years for a seventeen year-old is like an eternity. Let's just hope our national officials over in Peru have some idea how to mollify a miserable teenager. They certainly seem to have none when it comes to reading a rulebook and/or negotiating with FIFA's arbitrators.

Meanwhile, after losing 1-0 to Turkey the U-17s will have to find a way to bang in a goal or several in their remaining two games. A task made all the more difficult without one of their leading lights up front, and within the confines of Postecoglou's high workrate setup that favours automatons over individual talents. But let's hope the boys can do it, if only to negate Andrew Orsatti's unfavourable, Fozzie-copying 'report' concerning their technical capabilities.