EXCLUSIVE: Fifa Fails To Approve Kehinde Fatai Romania Switch

Football governing body , Fifa, in a letter sent to the Romanian Federation on Wednesday has shut the door on Kehinde Fatai turning out for the Romania National Team.

Despite having caps for Nigeria’s youth teams, the Flying Eagles and the Olympic Team, the Astra Giurgiu star had wanted to switch allegiance to the European nation.

If the switch had sailed through, this would have contravened Article 8 of Fifa eligibility rules which states as follows :

“If a player has more than one nationality, or if a player requires a new nationality, or if a player is eligible to play for several representative teams due to nationality, he may, only once request to change the association for which he is eligible to play international matches to the association of another country of which he hold nationality, subject to the following conditions :

a) He has not played a match either in full or part in an official competition at A international level for his current association , and at the time of his first full or partial appearance in an international match in an official competition for his current association, he already had the nationality of the representative team for which he wishes to play.

b) He is not permitted to play for his his new association in any competition in which he already played for his previous association.

Kehinde Fatai has been in Romania since the age of 17 after he was spotted by a scout in Jos and taken to Romania.

The correspondence from Fifa to the Romania Federation was signed by Legal Director Marco Villiger and Omar Ongaro.