Fifa, world soccer’s global governing body, on Monday finally gave into pressure to ban Russia from qualifying for the 2022 Qatar World Cup and announced that all Russian club teams will be excluded from international competition.
The suspension, which was announced on Monday evening in coordination with Uefa, European soccer’s governing body, means Russia will likely be excluded from the World Cup and the women’s Euro 2020 tournament. The decision comes just weeks before Russia were to play for one of Europe’s final places in this year’s tournament.
The decision came amid mounting criticism of Fifa for not going far enough in punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, coupled with mounting demands from national federations for stronger action.
The initial pressure for an outright ban of Russia came from soccer officials in Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, whose national team faced the prospect of games against Russia in a World Cup playoff in March. Other countries and officials, including the federations representing France, England and the United States, quickly said they would not play against Russia under any circumstances.
Fifa and Uefa said the ban on Russia would be in place “until further notice”.
“FIFA and UEFA have today (Monday) 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,” Uefa said in a statement.
“These decisions were adopted today (Monday) 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,” they added.
“Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine,” Fifa added in a statement. Ukraine’s team, which is set to play Scotland in its own World Cup playoff in March, will remain in the competition.
Uefa then went a step further in breaking its deep ties to Russia: It announced that it had ended a sponsorship agreement with the Russian energy giant Gazprom. The deal was worth a reported $50 million a year to European soccer.
Uefa had last week stripped St. Petersburg, the home of Gazprom, of this year’s Champions League final. The game will be played in France instead.
Fifa and Uefa decided to bar Russia only hours after the International Olympic Committee called for international sports federations to prohibit Russian athletes and teams from all global sporting events where possible. The Olympic officials said Russia had breached a commitment — known as the Olympic Truce, and signed before the start of the Beijing Winter Games and scheduled to run through the Paralympics that open this week — when it invaded Ukraine.
The immediate consequence of soccer’s ban on Russia is that it will lose its place in a four-team group for one of Europe’s final places for the World Cup. Poland, which was scheduled to play Russia in March in Moscow, had said flatly that it would refuse to take the field for the game, a stance it repeated after Fifa announced its initial slate of penalties on Sunday night.
Fifa had been criticised on Sunday after a statement that Russia could continue to play matches albeit in neutral venues and only under the name ‘Football Union of Russia’.
Cezary Kulesza, the president of Poland’s soccer federation, called Fifa’s initial decision not to eject Russia “totally unacceptable”. In a post on Twitter, he added: “We are not interested in participating in this game of appearances. Our stance remains intact: Polish National Team will NOT PLAY with Russia, no matter what the name of the team is.”
Sweden and the Czech Republic, the teams that could have met Russia — also in Moscow — if the Russians beat Poland, said that they, too, would refuse to play, even at a neutral site.
England’s Football Association then said that they would not play against Russia, a view that was backed up by a number of European federations.
Russia hosted the last World Cup in 2018 with the final held in Moscow and attended by President Vladimir Putin.
The indefinite ban on Russia also extends to its club teams, meaning that Spartak Moscow, its last remaining participant in a continental competition, will no longer be able to compete in its Europa League knockout game against Germany’s RB Leipzig. That match was already in doubt before Monday’s decision, with officials unsure how the Russian team could travel after the European Union issued a blanket ban on Russian flights into the 27-member bloc.
It remains unclear if the decision to exclude Russia will face a challenge in the courts. Russia, as well as some of its athletes, have in recent years successfully fought exclusion from other events, including the Olympic Games, by getting punishments watered down through appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
(Written with inputs from NYTNS and agencies)
