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Russia call for US world cup ban

Published

11 years ago

March 12, 2014

Members of the Russian parliament have written to FIFA asking
it to consider excluding Jurgen Klinsmann’s USA team from the
2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.
Alexander Sidyakin and Michael Markelov, two members of the
Duma, addressed their concern about the “U.S.’s military
aggression against several sovereign states” and named Yugoslavia,
Iraq, Libya and Syria among those suffering from U.S.
aggression.
They also included “numerous cases of human rights violation all
over the world revealed by E. Snowden,” and asked FIFA to
“urgently convene an emergency session to consider suspending
U.S.’s membership in FIFA and denying the U.S. team the right
to participate in the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil.”
The letter, dated March 11, 2014, cited Article 3 of the FIFA
statutes which says that “discrimination of any kind against country,
private person or group of people on account of ethnic origin, gender,
language, religion, politics or any other reason is strictly prohibited
and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”
It’s an eye for an eye, a ball for a ball. Don’t the let the USA take
part in the 2014 World Cup! End their membership of FIFA,”
one of the authors of the article, Aleksandr Sidyakin said on
Twitter.
According to the Russian website Newsru, Sidyakin explained that
the letter is a reaction to a petition by U.S. senators Mark Kirk
and Dan Coates, who appealed to FIFA to ban Russia from the
World Cup in the light of the ongoing situation in Crimea.
Kirk and Coates were not alone in asking FIFA to punish
Russia for their political standoff with Ukraine.
Last week, BBC journalist Chris Morris reported that an EU
official had suggested that there would be a push for Russia to be
barred from this summer’s World Cup in Brazil.
However, speaking to CNN, UEFA president Michel Platini
dismissed those suggestions, and explained that it is wrong to take a
political situation into the sporting arena.
Platini said: “I don’t know why 11 players would not be allowed to
play at the World Cup. Where is their responsibility? Why don’t
you [shut down] the Embassy? Embassies are still in the country.”