The shock wave caused by the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia is on the way to weakening the powerful International Football Federation (FIFA) and its Swiss-Italian president, Gianni Infantino. If the latter said to himself, Thursday, February 24, “preoccupied” by a situation “tragic and disturbing”FIFA has not, at this stage, taken any decision concerning the Russian federation.
From the first hours of Mr. Putin’s army offensive, on the night of Wednesday February 23 to Thursday February 24, the Ukrainian Football Federation had asked FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to exclude Russian national teams and clubs from their competitions.
UEFA has since relocated to the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis, the final of the Champions League, on May 28, which was to take place in Saint Petersburg. According to our information, the European body is preparing, in the coming days, to break its contract with the Russian energy giant Gazprom, its sponsor since 2012.
The tension has risen a notch at FIFA headquarters in Zurich since the Polish federation announced on Saturday February 26 that it was giving up playing its scheduled match in Moscow on March 24 against the Russian team. as part of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. This declaration had a snowball effect: the Swedish and Czech federations also said that they would refuse to face Sbornaya if the latter qualified for the play-off final.
In this burning context, will Gianni Infantino and FIFA exclude national teams from competitions organized by FIFA – including the 2022 World Cup – as suggested on Sunday February 27 by Noël Le Graët, the president of the French Federation? football, and suspend the Russian federation (RFS), even temporarily? Under the statutes of the international federation, the FIFA council (government) can suspend “provisionally” the Russian Federation, as Jean-Loup Chappelet, professor emeritus at the University of Lausanne, reminds us. This suspension must then be “confirmed” over there three-quarters majority of the 211 national member federations of the FIFA Congress.
“Basic requirement”
On the legal level, FIFA specialists agree on one point: the international federation is legally able to dismiss the Russian federation if “Infantino has the political will.” For the Swiss lawyer Henry Peter, specialist in sports law and professor at the University of Geneva, “the main foundation” of a suspension “must be that of respect for international rules on human rights and ethics, which includes respect for international conventions. This requirement is fundamental.. According to Mand Peter, FIFA could in particular rely on article 3 of its statutes on the defense and promotion of human rights to sanction the Russian Federation.
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