Russian soccer to give up seat on UEFA executive committee in April elections
UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, right, shakes hands with member of executive committee Alexander Dyukov during the 48th UEFA congress, Feb. 8, 2024 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, file)
GENEVA (AP) — Russia will no longer have a seat on the influential UEFA executive committee after the European soccer body’s elections in six weeks.
Also, Norwegian official Lise Klaveness is the only candidate for a new quota place for women, UEFA said on Monday.
Alexander Dyukov, the chief executive of Russian oil firm Gazprom Neft, was not on the list of candidates published by UEFA for its election meeting on April 3 in the Serbian capital Belgrade.
Dyukov was first elected to UEFA’s ruling committee in 2021 and said in an interview two years ago he would seek another four-year mandate. His absence from the UEFA candidate list was unexpected three weeks after he was re-elected president of the Russian soccer federation he has led since 2019.
UEFA said Dyukov did not apply to retain his executive committee seat and had not been ruled ineligible. All candidates for elections in Europe to the ruling committees of UEFA and FIFA must pass mandatory checks by governance experts.
Dyukov continued to attend UEFA meetings and games around Europe while on a British government sanctions list and during a ban on Russian teams from international competitions after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
FIFA and UEFA successfully argued at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the early weeks of the war that including those teams would invite chaos in their competitions when some countries in Europe refused to play opponents from Russia.
UEFA also dropped Russian state energy firm Gazprom as a Champions League sponsor because of the war and moved the 2022 Champions League final from being hosted at the stadium of Gazprom-owned Zenit St. Petersburg.
Dyukov was the latest Russian soccer official, most connected to Zenit, to win UEFA and FIFA elections. Others included 2018 World Cup organizer Alexey Sorokin, former sports minister Vitaly Mutko and Sergey Fursenko.
Klaveness is set to join the UEFA executive committee in April two years after losing in elections when she competed directly against male candidates.
UEFA decided last year to expand its 20-member executive committee and add a second quota seat for women. UEFA said Klaveness was the only candidate on April 3 to join Laura McAllister of Wales, who was a UEFA vice president.
UEFA’s 55 member federations will elect nine more men to the executive committee in Belgrade.
New candidates include Andrii Shevchenko, the AC Milan great and now Ukraine federation president, and Pedro Proença of Portugal, who was referee of the 2012 finals in the men’s European Championship and Champions League.
Shevchenko is among five candidates competing for two seats that have two-year terms on the UEFA executive committee. Proença is among 11 men competing for seven seats with a full four-year mandate.
Each ordinary member on the UEFA ruling committee was paid 160,000 euros ($168,000) annually, according to the latest financial report. Vice presidents were each paid 250,000 euros in 2023. That year, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin was paid a salary of almost 2.9 million Swiss francs ($3.2 million).
Also on April 3, UEFA member federations will confirm five candidates for five seats on the FIFA council for the next four years. They include Belgian soccer leader Pascal van Damme in the seat reserved for women. FIFA pays $250,000 each year for those positions.
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