UEFA extend Russia’s European competition ban and kick out Euro 2028/32 bid

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it had many worried about the status of the Ukrainian players playing abroad but especially for the people of Ukraine in light of a potential war. However, while the situation hasn’t changed since then, it has seen football clubs and football associations take action with several moves made by UEFA and FIFA. One of those was to ban Russia and all Russian football clubs from participating in any UEFA or FIFA related tournaments.

However, now UEFA has decided to update that list and have banned Russian teams from participating in all UEFA related competitions over the next few years. That includes the Women’s Euro 2022 with Russia replaced by Portugal, the UEFA Nations League, European qualification for the FIFA Women’s 2023 World Cup and a few others. Not only that, they’ve also banned Russian club teams from participating in all UEFA club competitions for the 2022/23 season.

“Further to its 28 February 2022 decision to suspend all Russian representative teams and clubs from participating in UEFA competition matches until further notice, the UEFA Executive Committee today took a series of decisions relating to the implications of that decision for its upcoming competitions, in order to ensure their smooth staging in a safe and secure environment for all those concerned,” reads the statement on UEFA’s website.

Furthermore, UEFA confirmed that the Football Union of Russia (FUR) had made a last-minute bid to host either the 2028 UEFA Euro or the 2032 tournament but both bids have been rejected. The statement also read that allowing the bid to go through would be taking a U-turn to their decision to ban the Russian national team and thus it has been deemed as “not eligible”.

“The UEFA Executive Committee declared the bid submitted by the Football Union of Russia (FUR) to host the UEFA EURO 2028 or the UEFA EURO 2032 as not eligible, in accordance with Article 16.02 of the Bid Regulations UEFA Finals and Final Phases which states that ‘each bidder shall ensure that it does not act in a manner that could bring UEFA, the UEFA final or UEFA final phase, any other bidder (or any employee, officer or representative of any of the foregoing), the bidding procedure or European football into disrepute.’

“Moreover, “the automatic qualification of the host team(s) shall be guaranteed (…) for a single host (…)”. Therefore, given the uncertainty as to when the suspension will be lifted, the acceptance of a bid from the FUR would also go against the decision of the UEFA Executive Committee of 28 February 2022, suspending all Russian representative teams and clubs from participating in UEFA competition matches until further notice, if an association, whose teams are currently suspended from participating in any UEFA competition would be allowed to bid for a tournament to be hosted on its territory,” it added.