A huge decision made by UEFA and FIFA will see Russia and its football clubs banned from participating in any football's major tournament including this year's FIFA World Cup in Qatar until further notice.
Over the few days, the sports world has been more united than ever since Russia started the invasion of Ukraine. Many sports have ended their ties with big Russian companies, while some big players have shown their support to Ukraine.
Many big sports have cut their ties with Russia and their sponsorship. Recently, UEFA and FIFA announced that they have banned Russia and their national team and clubs from participating in the competitions, including women's football teams.
It means Russia will not play World cup play-off matches next month, and the women's team has been banned from this year's Euro 2022 competition.
While Russian club Spartak Moscow has been thrown out of the Europa League, that means RB Leipzig will progress to the quarter-finals.
"Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine," FIFA and UEFA commented in a joint statement.
"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."
All these things have materialised in the wake of Russia's military invasion of neighbouring country Ukraine. As a result, this drew several criticisms from many sports and famous players.
Russia were prepared to face Poland in the World Cup play-offs in March. However, many national teams such as Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, England, Wales, Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden refused to play against Russia.
Manchester United terminated their sponsorship deal with Russia's national airline Aeroflot and Bundesliga club Schalke also cancelled their partnership with sponsor Gazprom.
Tottenham's manager Antonio Conte also said a few words on this incident "The whole world has to be compact and show [it is] solid against the stupidity of the people."
"I think it's right to express our disappointment about the stupidity about some decisions. Football and Uefa has to be compact and to show to be strong."
Other sports will also take the same step as football:
The International Olympic Committee praised this decision taken by FIFA and UEFA for banning Russia from football and will follow their lead.
IOC added, "to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants", adding that "the current war in Ukraine puts the Olympic Movement in a dilemma".
They added, "there has been a breach of the Olympic Truce" by those countries' governments. And they will do everything to prevent that from happening.
However, this has confused IOC as they recommended banning all the athletes is not possible as they will be competing for organisational or legal reasons, but they will not be allowed to compete under the name of Russia or Belarus and should be listed as neutrals.
.png)
Leave a Reply