The general manager of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk called on FIFA to exclude Iran from the World Cup in Qatar and replace it with his country’s national team, while Kyiv accused the Iranian authorities of handing over Russian drones that are helping to invade the country.
“While Iranian leaders are happy to see their national team at the World Cup, Ukrainians will be killed by Iranian planes and Iranian missiles,” Sergey Balkin said in a statement posted on social media.
A few weeks ago, Kyiv accused Tehran of supplying Russia with the Shahed 136 suicide bombers, which it uses to attack energy infrastructure, which Iran and Russia have repeatedly denied.
Balkin condemned what his country was going through, saying that “each of these aircraft was manufactured and delivered by the Iranian authorities, and the Iranian military and trainers directly managed the launch of the aircraft”.
“Shakhtar asks FIFA and the entire international community to immediately ban the Iranian national team from playing in the World Cup after the country was directly involved in terrorist attacks against Ukrainians,” he added.
Balkin said FIFA must replace Iran with a Ukrainian team that “proved they deserve to be in the World Cup” and “played with their heart”, he said, during the European playoffs in June. Follow the international soccer wedding qualifiers.
The Ukrainian team, led by Oleksandr Zinchenko and Andrykh Yarmolenko, defeated Scotland 3-1 in Glasgow, before losing 1-0 to Wales in the play-off final and failing to secure a ticket to Qatar.
The World Cup regulations allow FIFA to replace one national team with another, particularly in the event of a withdrawal by a participating country, but do not specify the criteria used to designate a replacement team.
Balkin concluded by saying that replacing Iran with Ukraine for political reasons “would be a historic and mathematically justified decision.”
Source: EuroNews
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