By Andrew Warshaw in Geneva
September 19 – UEFA officials appear to have been caught unawares by a strongly worded demand by Ukraine’s football federation to suspend Russia from international football over the Crimea crisis.
UEFA has already ruled that in its own competitions it will not recognize the results of three clubs from Crimea who have moved to play in Russian domestic competitions even though the Russians insist they are entirely new entitities.
On the day UEFA called both parties together for talks, in an open letter on its website Ukrainian federation president Anatoliy Konkov called on FIFA and UEFA to suspend Russia from world football claiming it “seriously violates its obligations”.
In the letter to FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini, Konkov said the Russians are “ignoring the basic principles of the football family.”
“(The) Football Federation of Ukraine is asking FIFA and UEFA as the highest football authorities to apply sanctions appropriate to a gross violation of the FIFA regulations by the Russian Football Union.”
“(This is) manifested in the illegal affiliation of some Crimean clubs and peninsula’s football federations and staging matches on the territory of Ukraine without permission of the Football Federation of Ukraine.”
Ukraine insists Russia has no right to include the Crimean clubs in the southern zone of its second division, the country’s third tier, after renaming them TSK Simferopol, SKChF Sevastopol and Zhemchuzhina Yalta.
Awkwardly for UEFA, and maybe deliberately, the letter was posted at the same time officials from both countries met European football’s governing body at their Swiss headquarters to try and find a breakthrough.
Certainly, UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino appeared somewhat taken aback by the timing of the protest – possibly designed to steal UEFA’s thunder – when he addressed the media following UEFA’s executive committee.
Infantino was all set to talk up the meeting with Ukrainian and Russian officials when he was informed about the Ukrainian letter.
Nevertheless, he insisted, there had been “very constructive and ordered” dialogue with “goodwill shown from both sides” and the parties had agreed to form a working group to find a solution.
“What Michel Platini and UEFA has accomplished here is very significant. People were not shouting at each other, both parties were ready to discuss together a way of finding a solution,” said Infantino.
“We feel, especially after the meeting today, that a solution will be found which will allow football to be played in Crimea, but in a manner which is consistent with the statutes of UEFA as well.”
And that means, he revealed, that any team winning a Russian competition after playing a Crimean club would not qualify for Europe.
“Give us a bit of time. Our task is to see that the population of Ukraine can play football,” he added.
Not surprisingly, the Russian FA took a different view of events. “At the initiative of FIFA and UEFA a special working group was created that should come up with the decisions to resolve the issue,” RFU president Nikolai Tolstykh told his organisation’s website following Thursday’s meeting.
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