The overlap of sport and politics is inevitable as the suspension of Russian teams shows
The overlap of sport and politics is inevitable as the suspension of Russian teams shows
World football’s governing body FIFA has imposed the most severe of sports sanctions on all Russian teams, national representatives or club sides, from their competitions until further notice, in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The announcement was coordinated with UEFA, the governing body for European football, making the ban applicable at the continental level as well. Immediate casualties would be Russia’s Qatar 2022 World Cup playoff match against Poland this month and a possible qualifier against Sweden or the Czech Republic, and Spartak Moscow’s Europa League competition against Germany’s RB Leipzig. UEFA went ahead and concluded a lucrative sponsorship deal (about $50 million a year, reportedly) with Russian gas giant Gazprom. Last week, UEFA moved the venue for this summer’s Champions League final from St Petersburg to Paris. The Russian team – not a Russian athlete – was already serving a two-year ban from global competitions (to expire on December 16, 2022) for a doping scandal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. FIFA’s initial measures announced on Sunday were similar; Russia is playing without its flag and national anthem at neutral venues and behind closed doors. The total ban came close on Monday, on the heels of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommending sports federations not allow Russian athletes to “protect the integrity of global sporting competitions”.
It is unclear whether the IOC indirectly forced FIFA’s hand, but it has revived the debate over whether athletes should pay a price for their political leadership moves. The IOC, unlike some individual sporting bodies, often sought to protect clean players from becoming collateral damage, a position also taken in the doping scandal. It is based on a recent ban recommendation on the need to ensure an equal playing field, a sacred Olympic ideal. If Russians can move freely in sports competitions while Ukrainians cannot because of the constant siege at home, it goes against this principle of fairness. Instead the harshest strictures were reserved for Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, who was removed from the Olympic Order (the highest award of the Olympic movement) for violating the Olympic Truce, which was passed to the United Nations General Assembly on 2 December. was adopted by and was in force till then. March 20, seven days after the Beijing Winter Paralympics ended. Events have also focused on Roman Abramovich, an oligarch, the owner of English football club Chelsea. Even as British lawmakers called for broad economic sanctions targeted at Russian businesses to cover up for Abramovich’s alleged ties to the Russian state, he called his club’s “caretaker and caretaker” the “charitable foundation of Chelsea”. ” is placed under. The worlds of geopolitics and sports have long overlapped. But he has not found it entangled in recent memories.