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Panamanians in Major League Baseball
Soccer squad qualifies for regional games, Olympic committee doesn't register them

Soccer team qualifies for regional, but COP doesn't register them

by Eric Jackson, from other media

The Panamanian Olympic Committee (COP), whose entrenched leaders have for many years insisted on sending more "dignitaries" than athletes to international competitions, is in some more serious than usual financial trouble. The government's National Institute of Sports (INDE) has cut off their subsidies because it turns out that some of the past support was illegally spent on liquor for partying Olympic Committee officials --- or at least that was the pretext. Now we come to another chapter in the soap opera, the 2006 Central American and Caribbean Games.

One of the sports is soccer, in which national under-21 teams will play. Panama qualified for the tournament in a series of elimination games, which culminated in an April 19th match at Rommel Fernandez Stadium in which it beat Belize 4-2, followed by a 1-0 victory on April 23 in Belize.

In the first game Luis Gallardo, Edwin Aguilar, Gabriel Torres and Reggie Arosemena scored for Panama, building a 4-0 lead until the game's 65th minute, when Bernard Linares scored for the visitors. In extra time at the end of the game Ryan Simpson scored once more for Belize. In the second game, which was marred by the hometown fans throwing things at the Panamanian players, Gabriel Torres scored the only goal.

But meanwhile, the COP signed up for 17 sports at the games, to be played in July in Cartagena, Colombia, and soccer wasn't one of them.

Why not?

The COP's long-established president, Melitón Sánchez, told La Prensa that this country's ruling soccer body, FEPAFUT,  has not adjusted itself to the norms set down by his organization. Which norms, Sánchez did not specify, beyond calling FEPAFUT a bunch of liars and accusing them of boycotting previous regional games.

What it's really about is that the federations in a number of sporting disciplines would like to be rid of Sánchez and the scandals and funding problems he has brought to the national sporting scene, and this is one more power play in that struggle.

FEPAFUT insists that it will fight to defend the tournament spot that its under'21 team won on the field, while Sánchez insists that the budget has been set and there won't be a dime for the soccer team. However, some alternative funding may come through --- especially as it seems that there is no love lost between Sánchez and the Torrijos administration.

Also in this section:
Panamanians in Major League Baseball
Soccer squad qualifies for regional games, Olympic committee doesn't register them