UEFA officials want to bring Russia back into football.
The UEFA congress is taking place in Belgrade next week and its agenda looks calm. But some officials are discussing “Russia's return to football tomorrow”.
“There are moves to bring Russia back into football. There are influential football figures who would 'bring them back tomorrow'. While Russia is still seen as having a significant influence on the game, some of that ambition is political. Some believe the country should never have been excluded in the first place. The pressure is growing internally,” one senior source told The Independent.
The source writes that FIFA and UEFA excluded Russia from participation in the competition, since at least 12 European associations refused to play with the aggressor, and their number was expected to rise to 18. One of these countries was Poland, which was supposed to play a playoff with Russia for a place in the 2022 World Cup.
UEFA and FIFA had to choose between disqualifying 12 teams or just one, so Russia was excluded from the competition.
Let us recall that Russian teams and the national team were excluded from participation in the competition after the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine.
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