FAI will boycott games with Russian sides in UEFA underage competitions

The Football Association of Ireland have joined a host of other nations in refusing to play against Russian teams should they be readmitted to UEFA's under-17 competitions.

UEFA had been working on a technical solution which would enable Russia's U17 boys' and girls' teams to rejoin competitions, despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement this afternoon, the FAI said: "At a meeting of the FAI board last night, it was unanimously agreed to re-affirm our clearly stated position that no representative Ireland teams, at any age group, would play against any team from Russia in any competition at the present time."

The English FA, Poland, Romania and Sweden have expressed their unwillingness to support the stance and let their teams play Russia at any level.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, who is understood to have brought the motion forward at an executive meeting in Cyprus, said afterwards that UEFA would be "directly discriminating" against Russian children if these teams were not readmitted.

The English FA said its position remains that England teams will not play against teams from Russia and on Wednesday afternoon Polish FA president Cezary Kulesza wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "I was surprised by yesterday's statement from the UEFA executive committee.

"If Russian national teams are allowed to participate in the competition, our national teams will not compete with them. This is the only right decision."

Sweden, too, followed suit, their statement reading: "The Swedish Football Association does not support UEFA's decision to allow Russian U17 national teams to participate in UEFA competitions.

"The Federal Board's opinion is that Swedish national teams (senior and youth) should continue not to play matches