Russia will make its return to the international footballing scene through its U17 Women’s football team at the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) championship.
The competition is scheduled to take place in Dhaka from 20th to 28th March.
Russia cannot take part in any European and international competitions after being banned by UEFA and FIFA due to their ongoing conflict with Ukraine. The country was forced to miss the 2022 FIFA World Cup while its clubs were thrown out of Europa League.
Russian athletes are also banned from competing in the majority of other sports with tennis the biggest outlier where the players compete as neutrals rather than representatives of their country.
The ban had forced Russia to look elsewhere in its quest to field teams in sporting arenas.
Russian Football Union’s (RFU) chief Aleksander Dyukov had already proposed the idea of switching the country’s allegiance from Europe to Asia to bypass the ban. His idea seems to have bore fruit with the SAFF championship accepting Russia, albeit their U17 squad, as a team at this year’s competition.
SAFF is a wing of the larger Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and consists of countries including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Their switch is likely to cause uproar in the sporting bodies around the world which may force AFC to change its stance and walk back on this decision or face isolation from the European bloc.
