Ecuador international Byron Castillo remains at the center of a scandal that could keep his national team out of the 2022 World Cup.
Byron Castillo (left)It would seem that the Castillo scandal has already died down, since FIFA officially decided not to disqualify the Ecuador national team, but the English edition of the Daily Mail got involved.
The resource received documents confirming that Byron Castillo, who played in 8 qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup, was born in Colombia and never had Ecuadorian citizenship. It is noted that there are two birth certificates for Castillo - one from Colombia (Byron Javier Castillo Segura) and the second from Ecuador (Byron David Castillo Segura).
The Chilean association claims that Castillo ended up in Ecuador as an illegal refugee and did not have the right to play for the national teams. However, this did not prevent Byron from playing 15 matches at the youth level and about 10 more at the adult level. A source close to the case noted that FIFA is deliberately delaying the proceedings in order to avoid disrupting the World Cup: "There is an epidemic of players with false documents in Ecuador, but FIFA does nothing about it."
Recall that at the 2022 World Cup, the Ecuador national team fell into group A, where Qatar, the Netherlands and Senegal will become its rivals.
