NGB Frustration

by Teri Vogt, Tournament Director

International events, like the soccer tournaments the NSC organizes, require sanctioning by many soccer governing bodies. For NSC soccer tournaments we sanction through Minnesota Youth Soccer, US Soccer and FIFA - Federation Internationale de Football.

Changes in leadership regularly result in changes of procedures and as a tournament director you often feel whipped around by these governing bodies changing interpretation of rules.

One that is affecting the NSC this year is a change at FIFA.  For 23 years Schwan's USA CUP has been sanctioned by FIFA and the timeline has been to submit our paperwork about one year in advance of the event. FIFA approves the rules, sends the "okey-dokey" back to US Soccer and US Soccer issues us a "Permission to Host" form. Each team needs to present this form to their state or international governing body in order to obtain permission to travel.

This year FIFA has changed and is apparently not willing to process paperwork more than 60 days in advance of an event. They have told US Soccer, according to a contact there, not to even send paperwork that is more than 60 days out from an event.  Maybe that timeline works for an international friendly between two national teams, but it's a pretty tight timeline for and event like USA CUP with 1009 teams from 20 different countries. At best, teams will just have a few weeks once USA CUP posts the US Soccer Permission to Host form to obtain permission to travel.

My experience tells me this procedure will be short lived, but my hope is that teams will be patient this year as NSC waits for the Permission to Host forms for its events.