Football set to be forced to reassess its relationship with Russia

Uefa officials told football figures to dissuade politicians from publicly lobbying for the 2022 Champions League final, which has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris,The Independent has been told.

Sources in the western European game have privately said they were under the impression that their federations could be blacklisted from hosting future tournaments or marquee fixtures if big plays were made to replace the Russian city in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

There was even open speculation, right up until Thursday morning, over whether this was because Uefa did not want to aggravate Russia.

Uefa did not directly respond to questions about this.

The very fact there were such suspicions shows how football has become so intertwined with business interests from Russia, right up to one of the Champions League’s main sponsors being Gazprom, the Russian majority state-owned energy corporation.

Much of this was discussed at an extraordinary meeting of Uefa’s executive committee on Friday morning, sparked by – and under the euphemistic language of – “the evolution of the situation between Russia and Ukraine”. Illustrating the point, one member of that committee could not be there. That was Alexander Dyukov, who is considered one of Russia’s most talented corporate executives, and likely the next chief executive of Gazprom, who was instead in Moscow to meet with his country’s president, Vladimir Putin. Uefa’s own deal with Gazprom was not mentioned in their statement about the meeting. The game as a whole still has much to consider.

All of this naturally pales next to the real-world consequences of the crisis but, just as “it can’t be underestimated the world is changing in front of us” – to quote one senior