Of all the “Domino effects” caused by the Ukrainian conflict, the wave of sanctions that strikes the Russian sport may seem secondary, but its symbolic scope must not be minor. It hurts the geopolitics strategy through the sport of Russia as much as it exposes the previous complacence of large sports organizations.
With its recommendations of February 28, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) dropped the first Domino with the penalties that the federations could take afterwards. Since then, exclusions and cancellations fall into cascade, like UEFA and FIFA who have dismissed national competitions and Russian football clubs.
In the last twenty years, the links of the Presidents of FIFA Sepp Blatter (1998-2015) and Gianni Infantino (since 2015) with Vladimir Putin, however, revealed a warm intimacy, one of whose results were the Attribution to Russia, in 2010, from the 2018 World Cup.
“A lower level of democracy is sometimes preferable”
“FIFA will always be behind Russia. Football is a lot for peace. This is particularly important in the current geopolitical situation,” said Sepp Blatter, little affected by the annexation of Crimea, the ‘last year. A few days later, Putin felt that “people like Mr. Blatter or the great leaders of international sports federations or Olympic committees” deserved the Nobel Prize.
Gianni Infantino had made the zealous promoter of the 2018 World Cup host he had qualified two days before the final, “Better World Cup of All Time”. “Russia and the Russian people have left an exceptionally positive impression on everyone after the tournament,” he again welcomed in June 2019 … a few weeks after being decorated by Vladimir Putin.
In the spring of 2013, while a social movement beat his full in Brazil and turned against the welcome of the World Cup the following year, the Secretary General of FIFA, Jérôme Valcke, admitted: “a lesser Level of democracy is sometimes preferable to organize a world cup. When you have a strong man at the head of a state that can decide, as may be able to do Putin in 2018, it’s easier for us. “
Gigantism and the cost of major events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup being increasingly denounced in democracies, the emergence of new “sports powers” – Qatar, Russia, China, United Arab Emirates , Saudi Arabia, etc. – Established a boon for sports powers. The latter remained indifferent to the nature of these plans, and even waive the promises of progress in human rights in these countries.
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