Frans de Weger: Russian football has been completely banned from the international football circuit since the invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Clubs are not allowed to participate in the Champions League and other tournaments, while the national team of Valeri Karpin was also excluded from the draw for the qualification for the European Championship 2024 after the last World Cup.
How long will these boycotts last? Sports lawyer Frans de Weger, who is also an arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration of Sports (CAS) and chairman of the FIFA Disputes Committee, has noticed a changing trend towards Russian athletes. “I have the feeling that international sports associations are cautiously considering admitting Russian athletes again, albeit under conditions such as under a neutral flag. After all, how long will it be fair to automatically exclude them for an unspecified period of time? Who knows, this war will last another ten years. I sometimes have trouble with that from the perspective of the athletes,” he reports.
Regulations in force in Russian football
According to De Weger, things can move quickly once one union takes the plunge. “You often see organizations looking at each other. What does the IOC do, what does FIFA do?” he asks.” For example, if the IOC were to decide to lift the ban, other unions could soon follow suit.”
In addition to the boycotts, there are other regulations in force in Russian football. One of them gives (foreign) football players the opportunity to temporarily suspend their contract. This means that they can decide for themselves to play elsewhere for a year, while their contract with their Russian employer continues. This in anticipation of a possible end to the violence in Ukraine. Some players have taken advantage of this. Others have stayed or have gone a step further: they have indicated that they do not want to return to Russia at all and have torn up their contracts.
When is it right that a player does not want to fulfill his contract, when is it not? According to De Weger, there are no ready-made answers in the FIFA regulations. “The main question then is: what is reasonable in these circumstances? If you play football in Ukraine, you can imagine that a player wants to leave there for the sake of his safety. But are you also unsafe in Russia by definition? That is more nuanced as far as I’m concerned and is in any case another point that can be discussed,” said De Weger.
What the lawyer sometimes notices is that the situation is sometimes abused by both players and clubs. For example, clubs that indicate that they cannot make certain payments from the government because of the war situation, with no further (or inadequate) evidence being provided. Or players who indicate that they feel unsafe at their clubs, for example, make an arrangement and then find another club within a day. “You can imagine that it is sometimes abused,” says De Weger. “It is sometimes quite difficult to assess when it is right if a player or a club wants to get rid of the contract.”
