East Timor is a small, Portuguese-speaking nation on the island of Timor, bordered by Indonesia. It became the first sovereign nation of the 21st century in 2002, and because of that, is a relatively new soccer-playing nation. And because East Timor is a nation of just over 1.1 million people, the country doesn’t have many natives to suit up for the national team. So, like those in Equatorial Guinea before them, the football authorities decided to shadily and quickly nationalize Brazilians to play for them, which is sort of illegal.
And thanks to that, and the Asian football authorities having found out about it, Timor-Leste (East Timor in FIFA speak) is now banned from the 2023 Asian Cup and has been fined $76,000.
“Nine of the footballers participated in a total of twenty-nine matches falling under the jurisdiction of the AFC, and seven matches falling under the jurisdiction of FIFA,” the confederation said in its statement.
The 29 matches in Asian play in which any of the 12 not-so Timorean Brazilians played in have been forfeited, and the federation’s general secretary, Amandio de Araujo Sarmento, has been suspended from all football-related activities for three years and fined $9,000 himself.
Jesse Pinto, an actually eligible foreign Timorese soccer player (he was born in Australia and his mother is from East Timor), opened up on the controversy in November of 2015.
“I’ve seen a lot of corruption,” he said then. “Timor have taken the mentality of Indonesia.”
But it’s even worse than just basic corruption, he said, because of the players who the country’s federation was recruiting.
“These players that are coming, they are playing at small clubs, they probably are playing for free, they are probably playing on s*** pitches over there,” he said.
“I’m not saying they are bad players, but they are not playing in big clubs in Brazil … that’s why they are coming to Timor.
“I don’t blame them for coming … I know some of the players had kids [to support].”
Many of the players were promised flights back home to Brazil that never came, and most ended up going unpaid, Pinto added.
