After 4 days of deliberation and emergency meetings, footballing bodies have finally taken institutional action against the Russian Football Federation following President Putin’s war against Ukraine. FIFA and UEFA released a joint statement in which they announced the various sanctions which would be imposed on Russian teams.
“Following the initial decisions adopted by the FIFA Council and the UEFA Executive Committee, which envisaged the adoption of additional measures, FIFA and UEFA have today decided together that all Russian teams, whether national representative teams or club teams, shall be suspended from participation in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice.”
This means that the Russian national team will now not be playing its qualifier games against Poland thereby blocking the team’s chance of appearing in the Qatar World Cup and the same goes for the Russian women’s team which will not be able to play in the summer’s Euros. Furthermore, Russian clubs such as Spartak Moscow have also been disqualified from the Europa League.
In light of these sanctions, German sporting giant Adidas has ended its partnership with the RFF. “Adidas is suspending its partnership with the Russian Football Union (RFU) with immediate effect,” announced the brand in a statement on Tuesday.
Having been Russia’s national team kit sponsor since 2008 and even been the main sponsor for the 2018 World Cup that Russia hosted, the partnership will now not continue into the Qatar World Cup which the nation is already not a part of.
Following the bans of other Russian sponsors of football such as Gazprom and Aeroflot, this severing of ties by Adidas becomes the latest development in the large-scale boycott of Russia whose acts of terror has led to it losing out on its spot in the footballing community.
