The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
International soccer, Olympic officials sideline Russians
Russian teams were suspended Monday from all international soccer, including qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup, as Moscow was pushed toward pariah status in sports after its invasion of Ukraine.
World soccer body FIFA and European authority UEFA banned Russian national and clubs teams from their competitions “until further notice.” Russia’s men’s national team had been scheduled to play in World Cup qualifying playoffs in just three weeks’ time.
“Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine,” FIFA and UEFA said in a joint statement.
The high-level punishment involving sports and politics came after the International Olympic Committee pushed dozens of sports governing bodies to exclude Russian athletes and officials from international events. Denying Russia a place on the international stage should deliver a financial and psychological blow, tarnishing its image as a sports powerhouse.
FIFA’S move excluded Russia from the World Cup ahead of qualifying playoffs on March 24. Poland already had refused to play its scheduled game vs. Russia. UEFA also took the last remaining Russians in European club competitions this season, Spartak Moscow, out of the Europa League.
Russia now faces the kind of isolation suffered by Yugoslavian teams in 1992 after war broke out in the Balkans and by South African teams and athletes in the 1970s and 1980s during the apartheid era of racial segregation and discrimination. Decisions by FIFA and UEFA can typically be challenged on appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
It was not immediately clear how the IOC’S request to sports bodies will affect Russian hockey players in the NHL and tennis players, including top-ranked Daniil Medvedev, in Grand Slam, ATP and WTA tournaments outside the authority of the International Tennis Federation.
The IOC also went directly after President Vladimir Putin, who turned the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics into a personal project. Putin’s golden Olympic Order, which was awarded in 2001, has been withdrawn, the IOC said in a statement.
The Olympic body’s call also applied to athletes and official from Belarus, which has abetted Russia’s invasion by allowing its territory to be used to station troops and launch military attacks.
It was not a total blanket ban by the IOC, which also did not specifically suspend the national Olympic committees of Russia and Belarus. Where exclusion was “not possible on short notice for organizational or legal reasons,” then teams from Russia and Belarus should compete as neutral athletes with no national flag, anthem or symbols, including at the upcoming Winter Paralympics in Beijing.
Russian Olympic committee leader Stanislav Pozdnyakov said in a statement “there is only one comment to make — we categorically disagree,” adding it would help national federations to challenge “discriminatory rulings.”