By Andrew Warshaw
February 10 – FIFA looks set to rule by end of this month whether under-fire Russian World Cup supremo Vitaly Mutko is eligible to join its all-powerful ruling Council.
Insideworldfootball has learned that FIFA’s Review Committee will inform UEFA within two or three weeks whether Mutko, who is among the declared candidates for five European vacancies on the FIFA Council despite his alleged role in Russia’s damning doping scandal, can stand for election in April along with the other contenders.
Both governing bodies have been maintaining a diplomatic stand-off over which of them will announce the results of Mutko’s integrity test, eagerly anticipated by all those who have been following the fallout from the McLaren Report into state-sponsored doping in Russian sport.
Mutko, who heads Russia’s 2018 World Cup organising committee, has served on FIFA’s top table since 2009 and however strong the western-led lobby against him, there seems little sign of him being forced to step down in the wake of the World Anti-Doping Agency investigation despite the fact that the Russian sports ministry, at the time he was in charge of it, stands accused of directing a conspiracy that covered up hundreds of positive tests between 2011 and 2015.
Late last year he was promoted from Sports Minister to Deputy Prime Minister and still acts as president of the Russian Football Union.
Mutko has denied any wrongdoing and it is understood he made his feelings known during the behind-closed-doors meeting of the FIFA Council last month.
Insiders have told Insideworldfootball that Mutko erupted after being informed that as well as the Swiss judicial investigation into the 2018 and 2022 bid processes, FIFA was maintaining its own internal investigation at huge expense.
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