Demanding Qatar's defeat: Bahrain refuses to give up with a new escalation
The Bahrain Football Association have issued a fresh statement after their protest over Qatar player Assim Madibo was rejected.
Madibo featured in Qatar's Gulf Cup group-stage opener against Bahrain, a game the Qataris won 2-0.
Bahrain lodged a protest with the Gulf Football Federation over Madibo's involvement. FIFA had handed the player a five-match suspension for a violent challenge on Canada's Ismael Kone at the 2026 World Cup.
According to Abu Dhabi Sports Channels on X, the Gulf Football Federation's disciplinary committee threw the protest out. They ruled Bahrain had missed the legal deadline of two hours from the final whistle, as set out in Article (19/1) of the disciplinary regulations.
Posting on X, the Bahrain Football Association called on the General Secretariat of the Gulf Football Federation to refer the Madibo case on its own initiative.
It continued: "Paragraph 7 of Article 19 of the disciplinary and appeals regulations of the Gulf Football Federation stipulates the competence of the General Secretariat to refer on its own initiative violations that the match officials did not notice."
The federation added: "While Paragraph 8 confirmed that failure to refer within the specified period does not entail nullity. This confirms that the regulation did not make the pursuit of a violation dependent solely on the submission of a protest, but rather granted the General Secretariat an independent authority to refer it whenever it becomes apparent to them."
Bahrain then stressed: "Given what has been raised regarding the legality of Madibo's participation, which became known to the General Secretariat of the Gulf Football Federation after the submission of the protest, and considering that Paragraph 4 of Article 55 deems the fielding of an ineligible player a violation that requires his national team to be considered to have lost 0-3, it becomes clear that the General Secretariat's authority to refer aims to address the substantive matters affecting the validity of the match and not to leave them dependent on the initiative of the opponents."
The statement noted: "Accordingly, the Bahrain Football Association requests the General Secretariat of the Gulf Football Federation to exercise its competence under Article (7/19) and to refer the matter to the disciplinary committee to verify the extent of the legality of the player's participation on the merits, without the prior rejection of the protest on formal grounds preventing this, while informing the association of the results and decisions arising from the procedures taken."
