The Ivory Coast Football Association challenged Wenger's decision to start the FA Cup game against Cardiff without its two internationals. They raised the issue with FIFA, which threatened to award the game to Cardiff if Wenger put them to play.

The two Ivory Coast internationals, Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue were with the squad in Cardiff and had undergone thorough training with the rest of the squad for Arsenal's FA Cup challenge.

Just two hours before kick-off FIFA, the governing body of World Football, told Arsenal FC officials that if Wenger used the players, they would take action, giving the win to Cardiff no matter what the result would be.

Arsenal's Coach Arsene Wenger had already filed a request to the Ivory Coast team in order for the later to delay the call-up of the two players. Ivory Coast rejected the request on the basis of a FIFA ruling which gives national teams 14 days of training before friendly matches and tournaments which are listed in FIFA's official calendar.

Ivory Coast has sent call-ups to the two internationals as part of their African Cup of Nations training camp and according to FIFA regulations.

"At the team meeting at 9am on Saturday, Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue were both in the team. But I had to pull them out at 11.30am as the Ivory Coast banned the players from playing and refused to give in," Wenger said about the incident.

"They threatened to go to FIFA if we played them. We asked FIFA and they said that if we played them, we risked losing the game. I didn't want to take that chance so I pulled them out."

"It's quite amazing when you get to a period where there is no common sense at all. We pay the players to play for them and they can ban the players we pay from playing for us, at a period where they're not playing at all."

"They're making so-called medical tests in Paris but it's just 50 minutes away from here by plane and we just wanted the players to go after playing."

"It is completely unbelievable. It's like you play the European Championship now and then the World Cup this summer. When they come back, they will be dead physically as the tournament is very intense in a different climate and there's all the travelling," Wenger said hinting that he will probably loose the players for the rest of the season.

There were no comments yet from the Ivory Coast Football Association or from the national team regarding the issue.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati