Russia and the problem with international football bans

Independent

26-03-2025

Uefa Congress takes place in Belgrade next week, and it is seen as an unusually sedate agenda, which could be quite a contrast to some of the discussions in corridors.
'Moves are currently happening to get Russia back into football,' one senior source tells the Independent. There are elevated football figures who would 'have them back tomorrow'. While Russia is said to still have considerable influence on the game, part of this push is simply about politics. Some believe the country should never have been thrown out in the first place. Internal pressure is growing.
Uefa and Fifa are also facing much more external pressure about another issue, which is being discussed with the Russian precedent in mind.
That is the proposed suspension of Israel following a move by the Palestine Football Association that the Asian Football Confederation has backed. The PFA said at least 92 Palestinian players have been killed in the war, football infrastructure has been destroyed, its leagues suspended and its national team required to play World Cup qualifiers abroad.
Human Rights Watch has meanwhile written to Fifa about the Israel Football Association organising football activities in settlements on occupied land, which would go against the governing body's statutes, which state 'member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter's approval'.
Fifa has been criticised for constantly putting the issue off, which has fed into the growth of a supporter movement called 'show Israel the red card'. Demonstrations have so far taken place in Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Scotland, Ireland, Turkey and Malaysia calling for a 'direct message' to Uefa and Fifa to 'apply their respective statutes and suspend Israel from competition'.
Protestors might find they are sending such messages to the wrong place, raising the complicated discussion of how international suspensions work - and why nothing is likely to change in any of these cases soon.
Fifa and Uefa did not suspend Russia out of any moral urge following the invasion of Ukraine. The move came because at least 12 European associations refused to play them, with an anticipation that would have risen to 18. Given that one of the countries was Poland and their planned World Cup qualifying play-off against Russia, Fifa was instantly faced with a crisis. The governing body wouldn't have been able to fulfil its fixtures that needed to be played imminently.
It perhaps says something about football legislation that, in usual such circumstances, one source maintains that the country refusing to play would be more at risk of suspension. In this case, Uefa and Fifa ultimately had to decide between throwing 12 teams out or just one. It became an issue of 'preserving the integrity of the competition', so Russia were essentially suspended on a technicality. The Court of Arbitration for Sport accepted this rationale when Russia appealed.
Fifa is not facing this urgency now. Although many Asian associations refuse to play Israel, that has been the case since the 1970s. It is why their teams have been in Uefa since 1994, having been expelled from the AFC following a Kuwaiti motion in 1974.
Human rights organisation FairSquare consequently criticised Fifa and Uefa for ad hoc decision-making, with 'almost nothing in their statutes that enables them to take decisions in response' to geopolitical crises.
It is why there is unlikely to be any change in any such situation. As Fifa president Gianni Infantino said when asked in February about Russia's ban: 'We want to have all the countries playing.'
This, for once, is more than a line. The governing bodies actively seek to avoid suspending countries for political reasons, as they don't want to get into the complexities of legislating on every global conflict. It touches on the same reasons that political symbols are banned. One country's symbol of expression is another country's provocation. Otherwise, as numerous sources state, they might end up with half a competition.
That is why the majority of bans or temporary bans from World Cups have been for reasons related to football or the running of football. As one of the most prominent examples, 1986 hosts Mexico were banned from 1990 for fielding overage players in the World Youth Championships. Others like Indonesia for 2018 have been down to alleged government interference.
Even Japan, for the first World Cup after the Second World War in 1950, was officially for failing to pay dues. The West German federation hadn't been reformed by that point.
There have only been three suspensions that were outright for political reasons, which were: Russia, Yugoslavia after UN sanctions following the Balkan war and apartheid South Africa. Two of those involved boycotts.
The rationale goes deeper than just politics, too. A general view, from inside the football administration level of the sport, is that national teams should be seen as separate from the states in which they can play, since the form of the latter can be prone to extreme change. Some football administrators point to the example of Iran in the last World Cup, where the players didn't sing the national anthem out of silent protest against the government.
More senior figures have loftier ideas about football being used to bring peace, which Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin spoke about when discussing the return of Russian youth sides.
'The moment a Russian child would come, let's say to Slovenia, and be embraced by a Slovenian child, he would see that we are not enemies and that life will have to go on,' he said.
That idea can be witnessed in Fifa's slogan around Infantino's Instagram posts: #FootballUnitesTheWorld.
It is partly how he and his predecessor Sepp Blatter are said to have harboured ambitions for Nobel Peace Prizes. If some of that seems absurd, there are more hard-bitten realpolitik elements to this too. Although football people felt strongly after the invasion of Ukraine, particularly in Poland, some faced pressure from their governments. Ceferin similarly claimed that the 2023 proposal to welcome back Russian youth teams 'was brutally attacked by mainstream politics, especially by the left wing'.
The vast majority of national associations follow their state's foreign policy. It is why, according to one well-placed source, a boycott of Israel just isn't being mentioned among Uefa countries.
The topic is being mentioned in some dressing rooms that face Israel, mind, as revealed by Martin Odegaard ahead of Norway's match.
'This is a background you can't ignore,' the Norway and Arsenal playmaker said of what is happening in Gaza. 'It's terrible for everyone. But we have to deal with the fact that Uefa decided the match would go ahead.'
Except, it wasn't quite Uefa's decision. It is for similar reasons that the Russian suspension absolutely won't change without a proper ceasefire. Should that happen, though, senior figures are already envisaging a roadmap for a return. A ceasefire would bring initiatives to 'normalise' Russia, with sport near the top of the agenda. Those in football say they would expect the International Olympic Committee to go first, then the International Hockey Federation, creating the groundswell for the world's most popular sport.
'That's how the Zurich-based politics tend to go,' one senior source says, 'Olympics, then hockey, then football.'
There may be another complication. What if President Donald Trump starts demanding Russia's inclusion in 'his' 2026 World Cup, co-hosted with Canada and Mexico, long after qualification has started?