We all know about the political tension taking place between Russia and Ukraine. There’s a full swing war taking place in the nation of Ukraine and the Russian President Vladimir Putin has been very blunt about the fact that he will announce war on any country that decides to interfere. Of course, some sporting bodies are deciding to penalise Russia and Russian sporting teams.
One such move was made by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) which is the world’s leading football organisation, that hosts club level as well as country-level football tournaments across the globe. They were pondering a decision against Russia for a long time and finally, they announced a ban against the Russian national team as well as Russian clubs.
FIFA, UEFA Bans Russia
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is another major football organisation and they decide to support FIFA with this decision, also deciding to complete the same ban on the country and any of their franchise clubs. FIFA was heavily criticised for not taking a stand on the Russia-Ukraine tension and this decision came after that criticism, announcing the ban on Monday, 28 Feb 2022.
With the ban, they’ve gone on to eject Russia from qualifying to the 2022 World Cup, and this comes only a few weeks before they were supposed to play for one of Europe’s final places in the major FIFA world tournament. UEFA quickly joined FIFA in issuing and honouring the ban and it includes exclusion from the 2022 men’s world cup and the 2022 women’s Euro cup.
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Russia was scheduled to play their World Cup qualification semi final against Poland next month and considering the country is unlikely to make a change in their current plans for the Ukraine invasion, the ban won’t let them participate in that game. The ban also includes excluding Russian teams from all other non-international tournaments, while UEFA terminated its deal with Russian energy company Gazprom.
Gazprom is also a major sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, in an agreement which is reported to be worth around €40m per Champions League season. The UEFA and FIFA gave a joint statement today to let the world know about this decision, and the ban will stay ‘until further notice’.
FIFA and UEFA statement on Russia
“Following the initial decisions adopted by the FIFA Council and the UEFA Executive Committee, which envisaged the adoption of additional measures, FIFA and UEFA have today decided together that all Russian teams, whether national representative teams or club teams, shall be suspended from participation in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice. These decisions were adopted today by the Bureau of the FIFA Council and the Executive Committee of UEFA, respectively the highest decision-making bodies of both institutions on such urgent matters. Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine. Both Presidents hope that the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people.”
For more updates on the situation with FIFA, UEFA, and Russia, stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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