The Federation of International football and UEFA have suspended all Russian clubs and the national teams from their competitions “until further notice,” the governing bodies announced in a joint statement on Monday.
World football’s governing body, FIFA, and European football’s governing body, UEFA, said that both organizations’ presidents — Gianni Infantino and Aleksander Čeferin — “hope that the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people.”
In effect, the UEFA’s club competitions, including the men’s and women’s Champions League, the men’s Europa League and the men’s UEFA Conference League.
The Russian men’s national team were scheduled to play Poland in a play-off for Qatar 2022 on March 24 – a match Poland said they would boycott – but the Poles have now been given a bye to the next round of qualifying with this developments.
“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.
“These decisions were adopted today by the Bureau of the FIFA Council and the Executive Committee of UEFA, respectively the highest decision-making bodies of both institutions on such urgent matters.
“Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine. Both Presidents hope that the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people.”
Uefa also announced a second highly significant move, confirming that it had cancelled a long-standing and highly lucrative sponsorship deal with Gazprom.
UEFA has today decided to end its partnership with Gazprom across all competitions. The decision is effective immediately and covers all existing agreements including the Uefa champions league, Uefa national team competitions and Uefa EURO 2024.”
Gazprom, a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation had been a sponsor of the Champions League for a decade and the final of this year’s competition was to have been played in the Gazprom Arena in St Petersburg before it was moved to Stade de France in Paris.
