FOOTBALL is the world’s common language.
It is played in dust bowls and palaces, watched in shanty towns and skyscrapers, followed with equal passion by billionaires and bus drivers. Billions understand its rules instinctively.
Which is precisely why banning a nation from football is not a trivial sanction — it is one of the clearest moral signals the world can send.
That is why Russia’s exclusion from the global game mattered. And why the suggestion it might be reversed is so profoundly wrong.
Gianni Infantino can not only bend it like [David] Beckham, he can seemingly curve reality itself.
The Fifa president has said he is considering Russia’s return to international football, claiming their ban “has not achieved anything and has created more frustration and hatred.” That is an astonishing claim.
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What has created frustration and hatred is not a football ban, but the relentless invasion of Ukraine. The bombing of cities. The killing of civilians.
Warfare has returned to Europe — and Infantino’s response is to worry about Russia’s access to the football pitch.
When Russia was banned in 2022, it was not an impulsive gesture. Fifa and Uefa acted under intense pressure from players, federations, sponsors and governments, all recognising the same truth: you cannot allow a nation waging an unprovoked war to parade its flag as if nothing is happening.
To be excluded from football is to be told, in a language everyone understands, that your actions have consequences. And now Fifa wants to take that message back.
Only weeks ago, Infantino, 55, was handing out a so-called peace prize to Donald Trump, but now he is calling for Russia to be welcomed back into the fold for doing the precise opposite of peace.
It’s called war. Or in Russia, a “special military operation”. What peace is being celebrated? What message is being sent to Ukrainians sheltering underground while football’s governing body frets about Russia’s “frustration”?
I know something about how Russia responds to criticism. I received a letter from the British government informing me I have been personally sanctioned by the Russian state — meaning I am permanently banned from the country.
I was also advised to take care — presumably so I don’t accidentally fall off a balcony. That is how modern Russia operates.
Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi called Infantino’s words “irresponsible”.
Infantino’s closeness to Russia is not incidental. He received the Russian Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin after Russia staged the 2018 World Cup and now, four years into a full-scale invasion, he wants to draw a line under it all.
Since the ban was imposed, more than 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed, including over 100 footballers.
Yet Russia has continued playing friendlies with sympathetic nations.
The symbolism still matters — perhaps more than ever.
As Bidnyi put it: “As long as Russians continue killing Ukrainians, their flag has no place among people who respect justice.”
Infantino was born in Switzerland, a nation famed for neutrality. But this is not a moment for fence-sitting.
As long as bombs are falling on Ukraine, there can be no return for Russia to the world’s game.
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