The N.F.-Board Genesis

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The N.F.-Board project was officially born in April 2003, when the "Observatoire Mondial des Footballs" (OMF) took the initiative to gather, in Liège, the representatives of football federations of Monaco and Tibet. After the OMF polled around forty federations many years ago, it is in the office of Luc Misson -attorney of the FIFPRO and known in the world of football for the Bosman case- where all started. 

 

 

Christian Michelis, from Monaco, Jean-Luc Kit, President of the OMF and author of the 1994 and 1995 World Atlas of Football, Luc Misson, attorney and humanist former Vice-President of the Human Rights League and Thierry Marcadé representing Tibetian Sports, plus the support of Karel Stokkermanns, president of the RSSSF the world's largest association of Statisticians, and two other football specialists of smaller countries, Pieter Veroeveren and Steven Parsons, were the inspiring forces of the project.

 

 

The N.F.- Board was born on a 12th of December 2003, in a Belgian pub of Brussels named "La Mort Subite" meaning "The Sudden Death". Fortunately the name of that pub wasn't premonitory at all, as today, after ten years of activities, the N.F.- Board is more alive than ever.

 

 

Registered in Liege (Belgium) as a Non-Governmental and Nonprofit Organization, the N.F.-Board was recognized by the United Nations in 2011 under the label ECOSOC. The N.F.-Board claims to be an apolitical and non-religious institution, consisting of individual Members and Football Associations looking for an alternative to the all-out process against FIFA. Its watchwords are, first of all, to respect the existing authorities, to apply the Laws of the Game set up by the International Football Board (IFAB) and to open the doors to all Football Associations legally constituted.

 

 

Consequently, all Football Associations are welcome until they become possibly for some of them, Members of FIFA. In that case we would be the firsts to come celebrate such an event. As described by English journalist Steve Menary in his book « Outcasts: The Lands That FIFA Forgot », the N.F.-Board intends to be complementary to FIFA, a sort of "Waiting Room" before going through the big entrance. Our deepest hope is that this "Waiting Room" sets out to be an open field where football is used as an instrument of union, distribution and transmission of dreams to the peoples, nations and populations of isolated territories.