World football’s governing body FIFA ejecting all Russian teams, national representatives or club sides, from its competitions until further notice is the most severe of sporting sanctions imposed in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The announcement was coordinated with European football’s controlling organisation UEFA, making the ban applicable at the continental level too. The immediate casualties will be Russia’s Qatar 2022 World Cup playoff match against Poland this month, and a prospective qualifier against Sweden or the Czech Republic, and Spartak Moscow’s Europa League contest against Germany’s RB Leipzig. UEFA went further and ended a lucrative sponsorship deal (around $50 million a year, reportedly) with Russian gas giant Gazprom. Last week, UEFA had shifted the venue for this summer’s Champions League final from St. Petersburg to Paris. Russian teams — not Russian athletes — were already serving a two-year ban from global competitions (to end on December 16, 2022) for the doping scandal first reported at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. FIFA’s initial measures, announced on Sunday, were similar; of Russia playing without its flag and national anthem, at neutral venues and behind closed doors. A total ban came close on the heels of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), on Monday, recommending to sports federations not to allow Russian athletes in order to “protect the integrity of global sports competitions”.
It remains unclear if the IOC indirectly forced FIFA’s hand, but it has resurrected the debate whether athletes should pay the price for the machinations of their political leadership. The IOC, unlike a few individual sporting bodies, has often sought to shield clean sportspersons from becoming collateral damage, a position it took in the doping scandal too. It based the recent ban recommendation on the need to ensure a level playing field, a sacrosanct Olympic ideal. If Russians can move freely to sporting competitions while Ukrainians cannot because of the continuing siege at home, it militates against this principle of fairness. The toughest strictures were instead reserved for Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, who was stripped of the Olympic Order (the highest award of the Olympic movement) for violating the Olympic Truce, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 2 and in force until March 20, seven days after the Beijing Winter Paralympics ends. The developments have also brought focus on English football club Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovich, an oligarch. Even as British lawmakers called for the wide-ranging economic sanctions targeted at Russian businesses to cover Abramovich too for his alleged links to the Russian state, he has moved to place his club’s “stewardship and care” under “Chelsea’s charitable Foundation”. The worlds of geo-politics and sports have long overlapped. But they have not seemed this entangled in recent memory.
