“FIFA will expel the EPO”: “Bells” from Baltako-Lyssandrou for DEAB penalties on teams

In the education affairs committee of the House in its debate bill to deal with fan violence spoke the president of EPO, Takis Baltakos and the equivalent of the Stoiximan Super League, Minas Lyssandrou.

The two men raised the alarm in case the DEAB (Permanent Committee to Combat Violence) impose penalties on groupsexplaining how it will exceed the self-governing. Something that, as they pointed out, will result in the expulsion of the EPO (and therefore also the Greek clubs), setting the example of India. They also focused on the provisions for them fan links.

“There is the EPO disciplinary law. Primarily the sports referee of Super League 1 and secondarily by the Appeals Committee of the EPO. According to FIFA’s statutes, the only penalties it recognizes for teams are those imposed by each country’s National Association. If a team is penalized, that is, behind closed doors or something else by a body that is not part of the Federation, even if the Federation agrees, FIFA will punish the Federation, expel them, as they did with India recently.

The legislator should know that it is not the links dependent on the PAEs, but the PAEs dependent on the links, and the more the PAEs are punished with strict liability for the actions of the links, the more the links are strengthened. There is no possibility of limiting fan violence or union violence by punishing P.A.E. and indeed with objective responsibility“, said Takis Baltakos.

The president of the EPO was also asked about the clarification of reports coming from Sportradar: “We are not in the Middle Ages to have only one penalty for all cases of handling, even a yellow card».

Mr. Blatakos, answering questions from members of parliament questioned the possibility of having one club for each PAE through the billwith Mr. Vroutsis answering him “You are wrong. We recognize only one club that will be affiliated with PAE. What you say is completely different from what will happen. From now on, we will know that each PAE will be associated with only one club».

From the side of Minas Lyssandrou emphasized: “The authority of the FAA to impose sanctions, in our view, is problematic both in light of the fundamental Rule of Law as well as due to the overreach of the self-administrator, as we have the jurisdictional bodies of football, which have the exclusive jurisdiction and competence to imposition of disciplinary sanctions and we believe and insist that this should end there.

We do not consider the orientation of the punishment of PAEs by an administrative body to be correct. We have expressed our objections, we have submitted our observations, we are in agreement and in an open dialogue with a good mood to find the best possible wording“, adding that “excessive formality or cumbersome procedure with tickets and checks lead to the inconvenience of healthy fans. We don’t want the strictest measures, we don’t want the theoretically best ones, we want the right measures to eliminate violence».