The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, this afternoon, responded to the banning of Russia from international football by FIFA. According to Putin, it is for the interest of FIFA, not to dare enter military affairs. Putin insisted that FIFA should stick to football.
In his statement, ‘Russia will play at the Qatar 2022 FIFA world cup or there will be no world cup to talk about.’ in his response to journalists in Moscow about his reaction over FIFA’s recent resolve to ban Russia from all sports activities, Vladimir Putin stated thus:
‘They are all hypocrites and I am not worried at all because football and politics don’t mix. FIFA should not dare do that otherwise there will be no world cup in the first place.’
It should be recalled that the international body that organizes football activities, FIFA, openly banned all Russia teams, club and national teams, from participating in any international competition till further notice. This is a stringent sanction from FIFA coming as a result of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
I have always argued here that FIFA was completely wrong in such action. FIFA had instructed the global football community that we should separate football from politics. When Switzerland players of Albanian origin, Granit Xhaka and Shaqiri did a nationalist celebration in a victory against Serbia in 2018, FIFA took disciplinary action against them.
There was a backlash when Hamza Chaudhary and Wesley Fofana raised the Palestine flag at Wembley last year. And for Celtic in 2016, FIFA fined them for displaying Palestinian flags.
Today what do we see? Clubs coming out of the dugout with Ukrainian flags. Poland is refusing to play the Russian national team with people calling on FIFA to ban Russia when the laws clearly say that whoever forfeits the match loses three points and 3 goals. We wait to see what FIFA will do.
FIFA had arrested all the athletes who refused to play against the Israeli entity. FIFA’s argument is that these athletes mix politics with sports. Today FIFA is doing the biggest mix of politics and sport. Well in the end, FIFA believes that Palestinians attacked by Israel do not deserve to live, as America did in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and many other countries.
FIFA recently banned Kenyan Football Federation because of government involvement, saying that football should not be associated with politics. Today proves exactly how FIFA involves itself with politics.
This may be an indication that they have never been straightforward, but people will never see these due to so called war going on. Why didn’t they remove Turkey, Israel and many more while there was war or mostly the USA when they invaded Afghanistan?
So FIFA doesn’t allows the government to interfere with the way they run their football world but it’s okay for them to interfere with how governments run their affairs? How ironical!
And don’t get me wrong. I’m not in support with what Russia is doing, but for FIFA and UEFA to project what the Russian government is doing on innocent people with love for this sport is wrong, totally wrong.
The world has to stand up against this administrative operation. This is absolute interference with the politics of nations. The best they could have done is to stop sporting activities in Russia, but the clubs can play outside Russia.
