Soccer-Jersey fails in bid to join UEFA

BRATISLAVA, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Jersey failed in its bid to join UEFA on Monday when its application was rejected by the annual Congress of European soccer's governing body.

Forty-nine out of 55 delegates at the Congress raised symbolic red cards when asked to vote on Jersey's application.

"Jersey is not admitted as a member of the UEFA association," said UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, adding that the request would be contrary to UEFA statutes.

"We are ready to modernise to change football but we are not above our own statutes, this is a big change," he said.

Jersey, a 45-square-mile (117 square kilometres) island off the coast of Normandy in France, is a British Crown Dependency which sits outside the United Kingdom and the European Union.

(Writing by Brian Homewood, editing by Ed Osmond)