Five months have passed since Technical University and Colón from Santa Fe, Argentina have sought the intervention of Conmebol, FIFA, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS) to review and issue a ruling in their favor regarding the case of Jorge Pinos.
Technical University claims that the player breached a valid contract for two seasons and wants to be compensated by Independiente del Valle for that time. On January 15 of this year, the Discipline Commission of the Ecuadorian Football Federation (FEF) sent a statement declaring "the complaint filed by Technical University against Independiente as prescribed and ordering an investigation into the forgery of signatures in Jorge Pinos' contract with the club from Ambato."
On the other hand, Colón from Santa Fe, the club that lost (3-1) in the final of the Copa Sudamericana, in which Pinos was the standout performer for Independiente, making several saves and stopping a penalty taken by Luis Miguel 'Pulga' Rodríguez when the score was 2-0, filed a claim for "alleged improper registration" which was not accepted by the Disciplinary Tribunal of Conmebol. However, this week the Appeals Chamber of the continental entity accepted the case.
After this recent development, the Argentine newspaper El Litoral, in its version, published an article about the chronology of this case and what could happen in the future.
To understand how everything unfolded, we need to break it down into five or six steps:
- Technical University files a complaint about the alleged theft of goalkeeper Jorge Pinos.
- The same club presents the complaint to the Ecuadorian Football Federation, but it is ignored.
- The club takes the complaint to Conmebol, but they say: "It is a problem between two Ecuadorian clubs, the originating Federation must resolve it."
- As Technical University does not trust that there is collusion between the president Egas and Independiente del Valle, they go directly to FIFA.
In the case of Technical University from Ecuador, the complaint is already in the famous Court of Arbitration for Sport (Chateau de Bethusy/Avenue de Beaumont 2 CH-1012 Lausanne, Switzerland), and there is a deadline until May to present charges and defenses.
What did FIFA do?
FIFA accepted the complaint from Technical University from Ecuador. What can Colón do in the FIFA TAS? They can present themselves in Zurich as a "directly affected third party."
Regarding this last point, according to what El Litoral could find out, it is something that the club president José Vignatti and Dr. Luis Leopoldo Hilbert are examining very closely.
"They, Vignatti and Hilbert, went to FIFA twice and won both times. Once with Unali's case, and another with the famous transfer of Esteban Oscar Fuertes. They don't want to go just for the sake of it, but with solid arguments," explain the Mundo Colón.
"The Pinos case is not closed for us," said President José Vignatti two weeks ago in one of his last public appearances. It seems that it is not closed, as they have the approval of Conmebol to appeal. (D)