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CONIFA World Football Cup 2018
Views: 3331
Hi all, you may have heard that the CONIFA World Football Cup is taking place at non-league grounds in and around London between 31 May and 9 June. CONIFA, the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, is the football federation for all associations outside FIFA. There are 16 teams taking part, including Tibet, Northern Cyprus, Tuvalu and Matabeleland, and the grounds being used include Sutton United, Bromley, Haringey Borough and Slough Town. The final will be played at Enfield Town.
It sounds like it could be a fun event, the non-league equivalent of the World Cup. To give everyone a chance of playing as much football as possible there will be placement matches all the way down to 15th and 16th. Check out the schedule and see if you fancy it.
http://www.conifa.org/en/
I have a spare ticket for Ellan Vannin v Tamil Eelam at 5pm on Saturday 2 June at Carshalton Athletic. Ellan Vannin is the Manx name for the Isle of Man, while Tamil Eelam represent the 3 million Tamil people from the north-east of Sri Lanka. I reckon this could be more exciting than the England v Nigeria friendly which is taking place at the same time!
Let me know if you are interested.
Football & politics.
Views: 3102
Do you know, I somehow had the ridiculous notion that both FIFA & UEFA had stringent rules concerning politics in football.
Still, good luck to Rohingya Rovers, Polisario Palace, Nagarno-Karabakh Casuals, South Ossetia City, Atletico Esequiba and - most of all - the impoverished Gaza Goliaths, favoured sons of all right-thinking Grauniad types and named after a victim of apartheid oppression, who've somehow managed to divert enough of their subsistence funds away from building tunnels, buying rockets and burning border posts to fly their team here.
Seriously, the temptation to fire-off an e-mail to FIFA, from an IP address in Tunbridge Wells, is strong.
Does the Chinese government know a Tibet side is taking the field?
Edited by Morgs at 12:07:10 on 21st May 2018
Ex-Hendon in the ranks
Views: 3154
I appear to be in a permanent state of confusion this footy pre-season. Interesting tournament - typically long-winded. Interesting places that aren't even covered by my stamp collection.
Interesting squads with a liberal smattering of Isthmian past and present including one Aryan Tayakhsh - remember him? I liked the lad, a tad hostile. He's apparently representing the team from Barawa. It's a region of Southern Somalia in case you were wondering.
I thought he was Turkish!
Re: Ex-Hendon in the ranks
Views: 3025
Aryan Tajbakhsh is one of the very few Hendon players whose name brings me out in a steaming rage. Not only was his man of the match performance for Enfield against us on 10 January 2015 galling, but also it was the game he should have missed through a suspension after collecting 10 bookings for three teams. Enfield Town’s long appeal and FA’s inexcusable dithering in making their first decision were the reasons Sam Murphy and Elliot Brathwaite missed the playoff final against Margate. If they had played, I am convinced Hendon would have won (even with Aaron Morgan’s appalling red card). Fast forward four months from the Margate misery and, as a Hendon player on his debut, he got sent off in the FA Cup defeat at AFC Sudbury. He has spent the last two seasons playing at League 2 Crawley Town.
Re: Ex-Hendon in the ranks
Views: 2932
Guess what? From the CONIFA report of Barawa v Cascadia: "A mass melée broke out immediately after the final whistle, which saw Doughty (Cascadia) and Tajbakhsh red-carded. It was a sorry end to an entertaining game."
I saw the Ellan Vannin v Tamil Eelam game afterwards, 2-0 to the Isle of Man. Crowd of about 250-300, pretty low standard stuff, well below Isthmian Premier....
Re: Ex-Hendon in the ranks
Views: 2983
Has he been sent off for every single (of the 25 plus) teams he's played for?
Complete liability!
CONIFA World Football Cup / Ex-Hendon in the ranks
Views: 11011
His replacement for Barawa was Mo Bettamer, who was far too savvy for Ellan Vannin (Isle of Man) yesterday. He scored the first goal with the type of strike Bostik League watchers would recognise from Staines Town in the last couple of seasons.
If any of you can get to the quarter-finals, semi-finals or finals (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), you will have a very good experience, especially if you follow the fanatically-supported Matabeleland, even if No.96 Bruce Grobbelaar doesn’t do anything more than warm up.
One of the nice things about the tournament is that every team plays on every match day so the quarter-finals are for the 1–8 teams and the 9–16 teams, semi-finals are for 1–4, 5–8, 9–12 and 13–16, etc.
Lucky Mugabe's been deposed!
Views: 2905
He'd doubtless take a dim view of Matabeleland fielding a team. He'd likely dig-up Joshua Nkomo's remains to teach 'em a lesson.
Does the Isle of Man still take a view of Peter Tatchell of which Mugabe might approve?
Edited by Morgs at 16:56:34 on 4th June 2018
CONIFA final
Views: 3077
Well Karpatalya, an ethnic Hungarian outpost in Ukraine, beat Northern Cyprus on penalties after a 0-0 draw. Going back to Mo Bettamer, Ellan Vannin protested after their final group match with Barawa that he had not been registered before the start of the tournament. All sorts of ructions ensued, with the upshot being that Barawa (offficially the host nation) progressed to the last eight while the Isle of Man crowd took no further part.
Back to an earlier comment, FIFA do of course have proper regulations on who can and cannot be part of their organisation. That’s why we have Russia and Qatar hosting the next two World Cups...
Re: CONIFA final
Views: 2971
The final was a poor match – 6th game in 9 days for both sets of players – decided by penalties. Saudi Arabian referee Mark Clattenburg kept a tight lid on the game and issued only one caution. The crowd at QEII Stadium, Enfield, was officially estimated as 2,500, easily the biggest to attend a match there since Enfield Town moved in. Karpatalya fans, rather like FC Romania’s ultras up the road at Cheshunt, lit flares behind the goals in “national” colours.
The game may not have lived up to the expectation, but the atmosphere was absolutely brilliant and I had a chat with the Matabeleland players as they had a barcebue in the park outside the stadium after the penalty shoot-out ended. Oh yes, and they were still singing and dancing!!
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