Futbolgrad: The Crimea Precedent – How Tavriya and FK Sevastopol remap European football

  • Wieder ein Artikel über die Krym-Clubs, aber auch darüber, wie die aktuelle Situation die UPL vielleicht noch viel grundlegender ändern könnte:

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    The annexation of Crimea has raised doubts about the status of its football clubs FK Sevastopol and Tavriya Simferopol and whether they will switch allegiance and opt to play in Russia instead. Both have received invitations by the Russian Football Union to enter the Russian football league structure as early as the 2014/15 season while both FK Sevastopol and Tavriya Simferopol have already made clear their strong desire to quit the Ukrainian Premier League by the end of the current campaign.

    UEFA is meeting on March 27 in Kazakhstan where the fate of the Crimean clubs will be decided. In the foreground to this, there have been calls to sanction Russia’s participation at the 2014 World Cup and to even suspend FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 World Cup to the Russian Federation. In a letter to Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, the President of FIFA, two American Republican senators have asked for the exclusion of Russia from participating in any FIFA sanctioned tournaments. Instead of sanctions, however, it is likely that FIFA through UEFA will actually side with Russia (and avoid a “Yugoslavia scenario”, which saw the disintegrating state banned from competitions in 1992 and 1994) and allow the Crimean clubs to compete in Russia.

    Taking into account the significant sponsorship money provided by Gazprom, Russia is able to deflect any calls for such sanctions as it has built up a powerful lobby within UEFA, largely through Aleksei Miller and Gazprom; the company has recently signed a major sponsorship agreement with UEFA, which is in the region of £43 million a year, and ensures that UEFA has not only political but also financial motivation to grant the requests of the Crimean clubs.

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    Weiter: Futbolgrad