The CONCACAF Gold Cup started this weekend. It's a continental championship struggling to be taken seriously, but it's not completely CONCACAF 's fault. With the intensely busy Fifa calendar two of the big teams, USA and Mexico, are below strength. And there was an element of farce, and potential controversy, before the tournament started with the inclusion of former French international Florent Malouda in the French Giuana team.
Malouda played 80 times for France and was looking for a second international career with his country of birth. French Guiana are not a member of Fifa, but are a member of CONCACAF. Therefore they don't fall under Fifa rules which prohibit a player from playing for more than one team. He played in the recent Caribbean Cup through which Guiana qualified for the Gold Cup. However, CONCACAF have a rule which states that countries have to pick players according to Fifa's rules.
Guiana's coach seemed determined to challenge the rule by playing Malouda in their opening match against Canada. Nobody could have stopped him playing but the match would have been forfeited after the fact if he did play.
In the end he didn't play and the story became Canada finding some much needed attacking power in a 4-2 win. And the bigger story was that two of those goals were scored by their 16 year old sensation, Alphonso Davies who only became a Canadian citizen in June. He was born in a refugee camp in Ghana where his parents were fleeing the Liberian civil war, and came to Canada when he was five. It's quite the counter story to that of Malouda. Playing and scoring at the International level, at the age of 16, how far can he go?
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