Keir Radnedge
FIFA’s Russian problem
Gianni Infantino is becoming a member of the International Olympic Committee just in time to weigh into the storm over Russia’s ban from international sport, which will loom over the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Games and the 2022 World Cup.
FIFA does not take kindly to being ordered around by outsiders, hence the continuing resentment in Zurich at the FIFAGate assault by the FBI in 2015 and the coat-tails followthrough by the Swiss attorney-general.
That circle-the-wagons stance is written into the statutes of not only FIFA but all six regional confederations and the 211 national associations, thereby prohibiting interference from governments or the police on pain of suspension.
For FIFA to suspend its own is OK. For anyone else? Anathema.
This is what pulls football into the ambit of Russia’s stand-off with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Not for the first time and not willingly.
FIFA was always reluctant to engage with WADA until, in 2012, it accepted that signing up to the anti-doping code was essential for membership of the world sport family. Hence FIFA accepts WADA’s dope-case disciplinary system. It accepts the need for a rigorous testing regime before and during the World Cup and accepts the “whereabouts” system of out-ofcompetition testing – of which failure to adhere to cost Rio Ferdinand an eight-month ban in 2013.
But the latest twist regarding Russia is something very new: no one has ever told FIFA who may, or may not, play at its World Cup. Especially not a major power such as Russia.
The tale goes back to the Winter Olympics, in Vancouver, in 2010 when Russia finished a poor 11th in the medals table. Such a performance was extremely worrying when president Vladimir Putin had authorised the expenditure of $60million on hosting the next Games in Sochi.
Reports to WADA by former president Dick Pound and law professor Richard McLaren claimed this prompted the creation of a doping and cover-up programme, that was later backed-up by a whistle-blowing athlete, her coach the fleeing head of the Moscow anti-doping lab.
When WADA sought access to the
For FIFA to suspend its own is OK. For anyone else? Anathema
laboratory’s records, the Russians stalled. And even when they did release data early this year it was flawed. WADA therefore decided to decree a four-year ban on Russia from competing in and hosting major international events.
That suspension will include the Olympic Games in Tokyo in August and then the World Cup in Qatar.
However, Russia’s participation in the finals of the 2020 European Championship and Saint-Petersburg’s staging of four matches this summer, plus the 2021 UEFA Champions League Final, are not affected. This is because Euro 2020 is considered a “regional” rather than a “major” – as in world – championship. UEFA may be grateful, for once, to hear its blue-riband national-team event thus downgraded.
Infantino, as FIFA president, was always going to be concerned about the issue, but now he has an even more influential role since he is about to be admitted into the “magic circle” of IOC members, who have their own divisions over Russian doping.
The head of FIFA has generally been an IOC member on the basis of the worldwide significance of the sport. Infantino’s prospective accession to the seat left by Sepp Blatter in 2015 was confirmed by the IOC executive board and will be sanctioned at the IOC Session on the eve of the Winter Youth Games in Lausanne in January.
Evidence of sports at war has been