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Press Secretary of the Football Association of Wales Ceri Stennett: â€œFIFA can impose sanction against Azerbaijanâ€ â€“ EXCLUSIVE

Press Secretary of the Football Association of Wales Ceri Stennett: â€œFIFA can impose sanction against Azerbaijanâ€ â€“ <font color=red>EXCLUSIVE </font>

20 May 2009 14:42 (UTC +04:00)

If the issue is not resolved we can not travel with our full complement of players and staff with usâ€, spokesperson for the Football Association of Wales (FAW) Ceri Stennett told Apasport.az exclusively.

The national team of Wales can not receive visas for entry into Baku for the World Cup qualifier with Azerbaijan on 6 June. Stennett said AFFA was not responsible for this problem. â€œAFFA supports us. The problem is related to the receiving of visas from the Azerbaijani embassy in Londonâ€.

The new rules are requiring visitors to be formally invited to the country and there are some restrictions over the passport introduction too. Not all players can get visa in time. â€œThe question is that the players are not in London and they are playing in different clubs. According to the rules we canâ€™t introduce more than 10 passports once. We have no time to introduce all passports. It demands a great number of resources and much timeâ€, said Stennett.

He said if the match was postponed because of this problem, FIFA could impose sanction against Azerbaijan. â€œI visited Azerbaijan for three times and was satisfied with all visits. I hope it will be so this time too and we can go to Baku with full complement of the playersâ€.

The spokesman said 7-8 persons got visa, 20 still needed this document. The team includes footballers and the staff.
â€œNow we are trying to get visa for the team members. There are journalists and fans, too. They also face this problem. Fans spend much money to support the team, but fail to get visa,â€ he said/.

Azerbaijani embassy in the UK told apasport.az website that the Welsh team faced no problems in getting visa. All will get visas in time and watch the game.

AFFA Secretary General Elkhan Mammadov told apasport.az website that the problem would be solved by the end of the week. He said related bodies would help the Welsh.
â€œEvery embassy has its working principle. Foreigners wishing to arrive in the country should obey them. The Football Association of Wales made representation to us two days ago. We appealed to the Foreign Ministry and Azerbaijani embassy in London and asked to accelerate the process. They respected our appeal and said the visas will be ready by the end of the week,â€ he said.

Mammadov said once Azerbaijanâ€™s national team also faced such a problem.
â€œThe members of our national team also faced such problems. Despite this, we respected the procedures of the embassy of every country,â€ he said.

Azerbaijan â€“ Wales match will be held in the Republic Stadium named after Tofig Bahramov at 21.00 on June 6.