ZURICH — The fairytale progress of tiny Cape Verde Islands to the last round of African World Cup qualifiers turned into a nightmare Thursday when FIFA found it guilty of fielding an ineligible player and turfed it out of the competition. Its place in the final round playoffs will be taken by Tunisia, which the Cape Verdians had sensationally eliminated at the weekend to win their group with a shock 2-0 win in Tunis. Tunisia coach Nabil Maaloul quit in the wake of the embarrassing setback. Because Cape Verde fielded the defender Fernando Varela, who should have sat out the match after being sent off in a qualifier in March, the match has been forfeited and awarded 3-0 in favor of Tunisia, FIFA said in a statement. It means Tunisia finishes top of Group B and will play in the final round of the qualifiers next month and in November. The 10 group winners go into a draw Monday to determine the pairings for the five playoff matches from which the winners will go to Brazil next year. Cape Verde has also been fined 6000 Swiss francs ($6,400) after a meeting of the FIFA disciplinary committee. The latest administrative mix-up continues a bizarre sequence of similar failings that have already seen Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Sudan and Togo all sanctioned for using ineligible players during the 2014 qualifiers. Cape Verde had ironically gained six points from its two group matches against Equatorial Guinea by similar sanction, which put it back in contention to win the group after Tunisia had in June seemingly sewn up top place. Cape Verde, which had already produced giant-killing results earlier this year in reaching the quarterfinals of the African Nations Cup, caused another big shock with a win Saturday to usurp Tunisia in the standings.
