In the war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian army also uses Iranian-made drones. Sergei Palkin, head of the Shakhtar Donetsk club, cites this as a reason for excluding the Iranian team from the World Cup in Qatar. He also proposes a successor.
The Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk is demanding that Iran be excluded from the World Cup in Qatar (November 20 to December 18) because of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine with Iranian drones. Ukraine, as a victim of these attacks, should get the free participant place, club boss Sergei Palkin wrote on Twitter. "While the Iranian leadership will happily watch their national team play at the World Cup, Ukrainians are being killed by Iranian drones and Iranian missiles."
FIFA and the international football world should lobby for the ban, Palkin wrote. "The decision would only be fair to draw the world's attention to a regime that is killing its own best people and helping to kill Ukrainians." The Champions League participants therefore call on "FIFA and the entire international community to immediately ban the Iranian national team from playing at the World Cup due to the country's direct involvement in terrorist attacks against Ukrainians."
Despite the difficult preparations under war conditions, Ukraine has proven itself worthy of taking part in the World Cup, said the Shakhtar boss. In the qualifying playoffs, the Ukrainian team lost to Wales (0-1) with an own goal. Comments below the tweet referred to this result, which has endured. According to the World Cup regulations, FIFA has the option of replacing a national team, but there are no specific criteria for determining which team to replace.
Last week, a group of Iranian athletes called for their own national team to be excluded because the leadership is brutally suppressing women's protests in the country. The Russian army shot down more than 200 Iranian-made drones in Ukraine in October, about a third of which could not be intercepted. For weeks, Kyiv has accused Tehran of supplying the Shahed 136 kamikaze drone to Moscow. However, Russia and Iran deny an arms deal.
