By Andrew Warshaw
February 22 – UEFA are coming under mounting pressure to strip St Petersburg of the Champions League final due to Russia’s military incursion into eastern Ukraine which has been widely condemned in the west.
European football’s governing body said it was “constantly and closely monitoring the situation” and that “there are no plans to change the venue”.
That was the position when Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border but the escalation of military activity has cemented western concerns about a possible full-scale conflict in Ukraine.
Last night Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine, after recognising them as independent states. Russia said the troops would be “peacekeeping” in the breakaway regions, though the US has described this as “nonsense”.
UEFA would be reluctant to get embroiled in such a sensitive political issue. Firstly because of its commercial partnership with Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, and secondly because St Petersburg lost out last year due to Covid when the final was switched to Porto.
But with the military crisis deepening, the clamour for a change of heart may prove too loud to ignore.
Switching venue would not pose that great a problem logistically. The last two Champions League Finals were moved at short notice due to Covid restrictions. Last year’s final switched from St. Petersburg to Porto and the 2020 edition moved from Istanbul to Lisbon.
Former British sports minister Tracey Crouch said UEFA should “urgently reconsider” staging the final in St. Petersburg while British parliamentarian Tom Tugendhat, chair of the country’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, tweeted: “UEFA should not be providing cover to a violent dictatorship.”
Julian Knight, chair of the British government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, also called for a rethink.
“It’s something that must be considered given this naked act of aggression,” he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “To host such a landmark event as the Russian tanks roll sends out all the wrong messages.”
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