The today UEFA ruling is not acceptable to the AFA, considering the events of 14.10.2014 in Partizan Stadium, Belgrade, before, during and after the match. It is our firm belief that there are no proper grounds and legal reasoning that should lead to such decision. The ruling is clearly in-proportional to the eventual alleged offences. Further details will be given when the arguments of the decision will become public.
The decision is clearly oriented to pilot the sportive results of the eliminatory group, while the major focus on the opinion of the AFA should be the extremely violent atmosphere and events that irremediably affected the football match.
The Albanian FA is fully oriented to Appeal the decision in front of the competent sportive authority. The details on the Appeal grounds cannot be considered prior to the publication of the arguments of the ruling, but some issues are categorical:
-There is no responsibility of the AFA, for the entrance of the flying banner in the Partizan Stadium. Security is a liability of the organizer. There were no away supporters in the Stadium. AFA cannot be responsible for lack of security, in the Serbian territory inside and outside the stadium.
-There were no security conditions for the game to resume. The referee led the players out of the pitch for security issues, but according to the reports there is no reference or decision of the referee and other UEFA officials that the security was restored. The pitch remained unsafe.
-There is clear medical evidence that Albanian Team players were, physically and mentally unable to play, due to lesions deriving from the violence of the home supporters entering the pitch.
-The punishments are clearly not proportional. A stadium furnished to transmit ethnic claiming, political and religious positioning, racial hate, was punished in same measure to a single illicit banner with an uncertified origin.
-The ultimate causes that led to the abandonment of the match were the evident lack of security, the violence suffered by the Albanian players and exercised by the home supporters.
The Albanian players were never notified that the official has decided to resume the match. This position is a product of pure fantasy. The Albanian team never refused the resume of the match. The Albanian players declared that they were physically and mentally unable to play a football match. There is no reference in the official reports that emptying the stadium was the proper way to restore the security conditions. If in the opinion of the UEFA officials, this was the right thing to be done, they should empty the stadium and then resume the match and invite the Albanian players in the pitch, if they considered Albanian players as fit to play.
We cannot regret a decision which we had not reached. It was inability to play, not refusal.
