Joseph Blatter opposes plans to organise a football league featuring teams from several countries of the former Soviet Union, the FIFA president was quoted as saying on Sunday.
“The creation of a CIS league is against FIFA principles” and could “bring disarray into it,” the Interfax news agency quoted Blatter as saying in St Petersburg.
Top Russian clubs like Zenit St Petersburg and their owner Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief, as well as Ukraine’s Dynamo Kiev and other non-Russian sides are mulling the return of a post-Soviet CIS league in order to boost exposure and income by featuring the best clubs from the region.
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A working group has been set up, but apart from Blatter the plan is also opposed by the Russian football federation RFU.