Gibraltar accepted as full member of UEFA
Gibraltar has six top-division teams and 600 registered senior players.
LONDON (AP) - Gibraltar was accepted Friday as a full member by the UEFA Congress, becoming Europe s 54th official football nation.
The move had previously been resisted by some politicians in neighboring Spain, who wanted to stop the British territory on Spain s southern tip from joining UEFA.
The decision will allow Gibraltar to enter into the qualifying competition for the 2016 European Championship.
UEFA President Michel Platini said Spain would be kept apart in qualifying from the territory it ceded to Britain in 1713 in a bid to avoid inflaming political tension.
"It s better to try and ... pre-empt such a situation and avoid it happening rather than dealing with the consequences," Platini said.
Gibraltar has six top-division teams and 600 registered senior players in its population of almost 30,000, who have full British citizenship.
The Gibraltar Football Association, which was founded in 1895, applied to FIFA for membership in 1997 with the backing of England, but the world governing body delegated the decision to UEFA.
