Russian football players found a tournament on sanctions

This summer, the Russian football team, for the first time after the start of a military special operation in Ukraine and the ensuing isolation sanctions against domestic teams, can play in a tournament very similar to the official one. She is invited to the Central Asian Football Association (CAFA) championship. In this competition, its rivals will be teams that are not high in the ranking of the International Football Federation (FIFA) – Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and the Iranians who participated in the Qatari World Cup are an exception.

Russian Football Union (RFU) informed that “at the moment, the possibility and conditions for the participation of the Russian national team” in the championship of the Football Association of Central Asia are being discussed. This message followed statements by the press secretary of the Football Federation of Tajikistan, Faridun Saliev, who told Match TV and other media resources that the Russian team would perform at the tournament, which will be held from June 9 to 21, presumably in Tashkent and Bishkek. This will be the first men’s championship of the regional football association, which unites six countries – Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Prior to that, she held two women’s.

For the Russian team, such an invitation could be something of a breakthrough in the blockade.

She has not competed since 14 November 2021 when spent the final match of the main part of the selection for the Qatari World Cup, losing – 0:1 – to the Croats.

After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, FIFA, together with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), like the vast majority of sports structures, suspended domestic teams from tournaments under their own auspices. As a result, the national team was deprived of a chance to qualify for the world championship in Qatar, which ended in December, and last year it played only three friendly matches with teams from CAFA – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – on the road.

The Russians will meet with another team from the region on March 23rd. Their next rival in the test meeting in Tehran will be the Iranians. And four days later, the Russian national team for the first time during the suspension will play a home match – in St. Petersburg with the Iraqi team.

The list of opponents in friendly matches perfectly illustrates which continental zone is most favorable to Russian football during this period. Moreover, the RFU itself included the “Asian theme” on its agenda in December, raising the question of the expediency of leaving the UEFA, which is not going to remove UEFA sanctions in the near future in order to move to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), for discussion by the executive committee. Instead of authorizing the transition, the RFU, however, created a working group for interaction with the European structure, but the president of the organization, Alexander Dyukov, and its general secretary, Maxim Mitrofanov, attended the AFC congress in Manama at the invitation of the head of the regional confederation, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa.

The full list of participants in the CAFA Championship is still unknown. It is assumed that there will be eight of them, divided into two groups, each of which determines the finalist.

The organizers expect to add to the teams of six members of the association, in addition to the Russian team, one more from Asia. In any case, it is hardly possible to speak of this competition as an extremely noticeable tournament. Of the six teams that make up CAFA, only the Iranian one, with some stretch, belongs to the top. She is ranked 24th in the FIFA rankings and played in the Qatari World Cup, retiring in the group stage, but defeating the Welsh and putting up a stubborn resistance to the Americans. The rest of the teams must be sought in the bowels of the classification. Uzbek in it is in 77th position, Kyrgyz – in 94th, Tajik – in 108th, Turkmen – in 135th, and Afghan – in 155th.

At the same time, it cannot be said that such opponents are completely passable for the Russian team in its current state. Say, in those three friendly matches that took place in 2022, she mined the only, and even difficult, victory was for the Kyrgyz team with a score of 2:1, dispersing the world – 0:0 – and with Tajikand with Uzbek footballers.

The caution of the RFU with statements about the championship is understandable. The fact is that it is not clear how the head football structures will react to the invitation of the Russian national team. After all, a tournament held within the framework of the official FIFA windows allocated for matches of national teams, the results of which affect their rating, is very similar to a completely official one.

Alexey Dospekhov