Besides a spot in the World Cup finals, Greece may deserve a fair-play award
for its handling of a Romanian error that could have annulled the result of the
first leg of the qualifying playoffs between the two teams last week at the
Romanians’ expense.
According to Greek newspaper SportDay, Greek federation officials noticed
before the first game between the two teams in Piraeus that Romania had violated
the FIFA rule that dictates that all federations that announce a 23-player squad
for a game will need to include three goalkeepers.
Romania failed to do so, probably in ignorance of the rule, because their
main keeper, who did feature in the return leg, Ciprian Tatarusanu, was not fit
for the first match due to an injury. Had they violated that rule, Romania would
lose the match with a 3-0 score. Federations can only declare two goalkeepers if
they announce squads of only 20 players.
Instead of playing the game and then resorting to FIFA to have the result
annulled and win the game 3-0, the Greece set-up – led by director Takis Fyssas
and with coach Fernando Santos fully aware – contacted directly the Romanian
federation and alerted officials about their error before the match at the
Karaiskakis Stadium.
The Romanians acted immediately, but instead of calling up another goalkeeper
– given the shortage of time – they added the name of an outfield player to
those of Bogdan Lobont and Costan Pantilimon as the three goalkeepers of the
Romanian national team for the Friday game.
Fyssas reportedly told the Romanians “we want to qualify on the field and not
on paper,” to which the Romanian officials responded with their honest
gratitude.
