What options does Chile have to win the Byron Castillo CAS case?

The FIFA Disciplinary Committee has rejected the complaint filed by Chile to contest the participation of Byron Castillo as Ecuador’s national team in the last Qualifiers. Simply put, the Reds stayed away from the World Cup in Qatar again. If before he had lost the option of the sporting path, the legal turned his back on him again. The last resort was exhausted.

Strictly speaking, the Chilean federation still has two instances to reverse its destiny. The first is the FIFA Appeals Chamber, the highest court in world football’s governing body. However, in the vast majority of cases, this chamber generally ratifies first instance decisions. Next, the focus is on the last hope: the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Or the TAS, for its acronym in French.

Lawyers do not lose the illusion. Own Eduardo Carlezzo He said on Friday that he felt convinced of the irregularity he was trying to verify. “What would FIFA miss? A player confession? I don’t think we’ll get there, but we have all the documentation linking him to Tumaco,” he said. These antecedents and those that are added these days, especially after knowing the legal bases of the opinion, are those that will be transmitted, first to the Court of Appeal and, later, to the CAS.

Is there a chance of winning the controversy that has Chile and Ecuador in suspense before the court based in Lausanne? In Carlezzo’s environment, they keep the faith. “They are all generals after the battle, but there is still fabric to be cut,” they reply.

However, beyond the sensations, the concrete thing is that the Chilean counter-offensive will reside in the explanation given by FIFA. “Chile’s position was clear, but we only know these arguments. Ecuador’s defense is not public, it is something that at the moment only appears in the procedure before FIFA”, says Mauricio Ríos, head of the sports law area at Salinas y Ríos Abogados and visiting scholar at Harvard University.

The key, says Ríos, will be in the reasons given by the first instance of FIFA and in a change of strategy. “Based on the arguments known to date, I think that the falsification of documents is something complex to prove, despite the statements or certificates provided. The defense should try to focus on an alteration that comes from the player and/or the federation and not on the validity of the documents issued, for example, by the civil registry or the courts of justice”, advise.

More skeptical is his colleague Francisco Moya. “Chile’s real options are tied to the evidence it has to demonstrate its legal position. From this point of view, it seems to me that FIFA will never question a document issued by a court or a judicial body of the country of a member federation. Therefore, if the falsity alleged by Chile is based on the existence of a prior certificate, the possibilities are significantly reduced. The only way to counter that is to provide new evidence, but I don’t see what evidence there could be to disarm a final court ruling,” he says.