Looks like the football officials are taking us for fools.
Today, Russian football is in complete isolation. International football tournaments are banned in Russia, our teams have been excluded from prestigious competitions, and our legionnaires are fleeing clubs in circumvention of contractual obligations… All this is the fruit of the active work of FIFA and UEFA in recent months.
However, Russia should not despair. Sports officials figured out how to save the country from an impending disaster. All you need to do is… hand over all the remaining money to them. That will be safer.
Do they take us for fools or just mock us?
Care or divorce?
According to Match TV, the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) decided to create a special bank account where it is planned to accumulate money from Russian clubs. This account will carefully store funds intended for our clubs from the sale and loan of football players abroad.
The idea, at first glance, is sensible – the leaders of world and European football seem to take care of Russian teams, which, due to sanctions, find it difficult to make financial transactions with representatives of foreign countries. Only one nuance is confusing – clubs from Russia will be able to use the money only after the normalization of relations in the world. What is hidden under this wording, one can only guess.
The world is big, and harmonious relations between all its parts can only be in non-science fiction. Yes, and normalization is a subjective concept, without additional explanations – almost meaningless. One thing remains – to take the word of respected officials, who in recent months have done nothing but prove their independence and impartiality.
Influence tool
If we discard the words about imaginary help to our football, it seems that FIFA and UEFA want to come up with another instrument of influence on Russia. The old ones have already lost their relevance: it will no longer be possible to take away the Champions League final from us again, and scare us with a ban on playing in various tournaments, too.
And what if in Russia they start to engage in arbitrariness – will they include Crimean clubs in the general championship system or will they covet foreign football jurisdictions? This is where the piggy bank is under someone’s control and will come to the rescue. It will not be possible to reason – it will be possible to put pressure financially. Freeze accounts, and even withdraw funds from them – in someone’s favor.
For reference, let us recall that UEFA did not allow Spartak to take part in the spring stage of European competitions last season, and in principle, our teams will not be in the next draw of European club tournaments. Also, the department of Alexander Ceferin deprived St. Petersburg of the right to host the Champions League final. Among other things, our national team was not allowed to participate in the League of Nations, the women’s team was expelled from the list of participants in the European Championship, and the Russian “youth team” was not allowed to qualify for the next international tournament. Mr. Čeferin commented on all these sanctions with a very vivid phrase: “My heart is breaking, but we cannot do otherwise.”
FIFA, in turn, did not allow the Russian team to compete for a ticket to the World Cup even on a neutral field, although initially we had to play with the Poles on our territory. This, by the way, was not the end of the matter. The department of Gianni Infantino, in principle, suspended the team of Valery Karpin from participating in any official tournaments. The icing on the cake was the fresh permission for foreigners to suspend employment contracts with Russian clubs until June 30, 2023. The key effect of the last measure is the outflow of legionnaires from Russia and the bleeding of the RPL.
Trust and responsibility
The above is likely to have been done as part of UEFA’s current “Together for the Future of Football” strategy or FIFA’s World Football Development Program “Vision 2020-2033”. Let’s refresh some excerpts from the documents:
– UEFA will focus on increasing the number of people playing football; improve the quality of management at all levels; give teams more opportunities to play official matches; enrich the viewing experience of football fans around the world, – published on the official website of the Union of European Football Associations.
The rulers of world and European football in a few months have greatly enriched the spectator experience in Russia – in the absence of their own participants in international tournaments, all the football successes of domestic clubs over the past couple of decades have had to be reviewed. Yes, and the teams of our organization were given too many chances to hold official matches – the Premier League, FNL, FNL-2 and even the Cup of the country are still available to athletes.
After all this, how can one not believe that the money of Russian clubs will remain under the reliable protection of FIFA and UEFA, because such concepts as “trust” and “responsibility” appear in official documents as the basis of their strategy? But for some reason it’s hard to believe. So for now, we’ll probably keep our money. As they say, until the “normalization of relations.” And we’ll see there.
