Why Fifa Banned Equatorial Guinea from the 2019 Women’s World Cup

Fifa has expelled Equatorial Guinea from the 2019 Women’s World Cup for using fake documents and selecting 10 ineligible players in its Olympic team.

Two more Equatorial Guinea players will serve 10-match international bans for using “forged and falsified documents” to claim nationality, Fifa said on Thursday. Equatorial Guinea’s football federation was fined £78,000.


The small, oil-rich country has been implicated in trying to buy football success by enticing foreign players, mostly from Brazil. Fifa listed 10 Brazil-born players it had found to be ineligible. The players with forged documents were from Cameroon and Nigeria.

According to the UK Guardian, In a previous related case, Fifa banned Equatorial Guinea’s women from the 2020 Olympic qualifying programme. That decision related to a Brazil-born player who had two passports and two birth certificates with personal details that did not match. Further Fifa investigations revealed 10 more ineligible players picked for 2016 Olympic qualifying games and two forgery cases.

Equatorial Guinea’s women’s team were disqualified from the 2012 London Olympics for fielding an ineligible player. The two-times African champions last won the title in 2012.

The men’s national team were stripped by Fifa of a victory in World Cup qualifying in 2013 when none of the starting lineup was born in Equatorial Guinea.