European football faces up to its Gazprom problem as Russia-Ukraine crisis continues - The Warm-Up

FRIDAY'S BIG STORIES Extraordinary Circumstances Ad/> Sport is in politics, and politics is in sport, and each is moved by the other. Russia's invasion of Ukraine makes football seem impossibly small and irrelevant, and yet there are football stories folded into it, created from it, spun out by the shockwaves.

Most obviously: what on earth happens to all the football? /> FootballSarri fumes over VAR as Lazio KO'd from Europa League by Porto3 HOURS AGO Today, at around the time this piece will be going up, UEFA's executive committee will be in the middle of an extraordinary general meeting. The decision to move the Champions League final from St.

Petersburg has already been taken, per reports; this meeting is about formalising that decision and identifying the replacement. You'd imagine the word «Gazprom» will also come up, even if Alexander Dyukov, Russia's UEFA member and CEO of Gazprom, finds himself unable to attend the meeting.

It was frankly bizarre, watching the Champions League on Tuesday and Wednesday and seeing the Gazprom adverts unrolling as usual, lighting up the football, as though the world was just proceeding in some ordinary way. And that was before the invasion began in earnest.

Following the Champions League games this week, and amid «concerns» from viewers, BT Sport stated that «As part of our UEFA contract we are obliged to show the UEFA Champions League bumpers, which are provided to us by UEFA to include in our broadcast.» Today, then, we'll find out if UEFA's lawyers have managed to locate the «hey, you can tear this up if there's a war» clause in all those contracts. Things appear to have been a little simpler (or perhaps cheaper) for Schalke, who have removed the company from the front of their