FIFA severely punished a Southeast Asian team, stopping almost all activities

The Brunei Football Federation is about to receive a heavy fine from FIFA for not completing paperwork issues.

Listen to the article content

Recently, the Football Association of Brunei (FABD) failed to submit the statutory audit approved by the 8th FABD Congress last week.

Therefore, the second tranche of FIFA Forward 3.0 funding in 2023 for Brunei football has been held by FIFA until FABD submits a statutory audit approved by FABD members.

Because FIFA’s sponsorship fund has a great influence on the organization of domestic tournaments and the participation of Brunei teams in the continental arena. Therefore, all football activities in Brunei were completely “frozen”.

Most recently, Brunei withdrew from the 2023 Asian Football Confederation Futsal Qualifiers and had to pay a fine of 10,000 USD to AFC.

More gloomy, The Brunei National Championship (BSL) will also be postponed after week 22. The final rankings of the tournament after week 22 will be announced as the final rankings of BSL 2023. Youth tournaments will also be postponed beyond September 2023 until further notice.

The future of Brunei football appears quite unclear after this punishment.

In the past, Brunei also received a very heavy fine from FIFA in 2009 for allowing political issues to affect football activities. It took nearly 2 years for Brunei to return to international competition.

Brunei is an underdeveloped football country in Southeast Asia. For many years, they have not shown any progress but on the contrary have had a lot of instability.

In the near future, the Brunei national team will compete in the 3rd World Cup Qualifying Round. However, there will not be too much hope for Brunei because they have to face a much stronger opponent, Indonesia. Therefore, conceding few goals against Indonesia was very successful for Brunei. The first and second leg matches will take place on October 12 and October 17, respectively.