The well-known Russian coach Gadzhi Gadzhiev told Euro‑Futbol.Ru that from a sporting point of view, the Russian national team would have been better off playing in the Central Asian Football Association (CAFA) tournament, but if this prevents them from returning to UEFA, then the refusal to participate was right.

On Tuesday, the Secretary General of the Russian Football Union (RFU), Maxim Mitrofanov, said that the Russian team would not take part in the CAFA tournament due to the “heavy load on the players.” The teams of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are to play in the tournament this summer.

– How do you feel about this decision?

– From a sports point of view, it was better to participate in this tournament, despite the fact that Asian tournaments are not very competitive. Yes, European tournaments are stronger and better to play than not to play. Although the recent World Cup showed that the Asian teams are not so weak. If participation in this tournament can prevent a return to UEFA, then there is no point in it. If the leaders of the RFU were guided precisely by this principle, I see nothing wrong. We need to think about the future of the Russian team. Perhaps this step will bring us closer to participating in European tournaments.

– Is it better to play friendly matches with rivals of equal strength or official matches with weaker ones?

— I don’t know if there is a difference in class between Cameroon’s conditional team and teams from CAFA. Playing in an official tournament with a children’s school is one thing, but it’s another thing to play with teams of the same level. When you take a medicine, you know it has side effects, but you keep taking it anyway because there are more positive effects. Here it is necessary to weigh and understand where there are more positive effects, and where there are less. Any official meeting is more intense than any test game.

Russian teams and clubs have been suspended from tournaments under the auspices of the Union of European Associations (UEFA) and the International Football Federation (FIFA) due to the situation in Ukraine.

Watch live broadcasts of WORLD RPL matches on Match TV and MATCH PREMIER channels, as well as matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru websites.