November 27 – In an unusual move, UEFA has banned for life a staff member of Azerbaijani champions Qarabag for a social media post that showed “racist behaviour” and “incidents of a non-sporting nature”.
UEFA said its Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body had decided to ban Nurlan Ibrahimov (pictured), who was the club’s press officer and had already been suspended from November 3, from exercising any football-related activity.
Earlier this month, the Football Federation of Armenia had called for Qarabag to be expelled from European football for comments Ibrahimov made about Armenians, which were subsequently deleted. UEFA, which did not give details about the comments, said it would ask FIFA to extend the ban worldwide against Ibrahimov.
Qarabağ was also fined €100,000 though the club pleaded that it had opened an internal disciplinary case against Ibrahimov and that it did not support his comments which related to the bloody ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan’s armed forces and ethnic Armenian forces over the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Following the takeover of the region by Armenia in 1993, Qarabag moved to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. In his post, Ibrahimov had called for the killing of “all the Armenians, old and young, without distinction,” according to the Armenian Football Federation (FFA).
Qarabag, still involved in the Europa League group stage, argued previously that Ibrahimov had been traumatised while watching footage of the conflict, including the deaths of women and children in Azeri cities, and that he regretted what he said.
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