Dubai: Iceland has become the second nation after the UK to announce a diplomatic boycott of this summer’s Fifa World Cup in Russia, while Australia could follow suit, as the fallout from the Salisbury spy attack continues.
After the March 4 Novichok nerve agent poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the Wiltshire town, UK Prime Minister Theresa May expelled 23 Russia diplomats, and announced that no ministers or members of the royal family would attend the June 14 to July 15 event.
In the wake of 22 other countries joining the UK in expelling Russian diplomats this week, others too are expected to snub the football tournament.
“Among the measures taken by Iceland is the temporary postponement of all high-level bilateral dialogue with the Russian authorities,” read a statement from Iceland’s foreign ministry. “Consequently, Icelandic leaders will not attend the Fifa World Cup in Russia this summer.”
Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop also said that after expelling Russian diplomats: “There are a whole range of options of further actions that could be taken. The World Cup is one of the further options.”
The Football Federation of Australia was forced to clarify that Bishop was referring to a diplomatic boycott of the tournament and not a boycott by the team.
From the total list of 23 countries to have expelled Russian diplomats, seven others have qualified for the World Cup along with England, Iceland and Australia, they are; Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Croatia, Denmark and Poland.
The above listed could feasibly avoid sending delegates as well, but have so far not announced any intention to do so.
On top of qualified nations refusing to send delegates, fans could also be put off attending the tournament.
Ticket requests made by England fans to Fifa were already down 75 per cent compared to the last World Cup in Brazil in 2014 even before the Salisbury spy attack, with just 24,125 applications as opposed to 96,780 made at this stage four years ago.
Current diplomatic tensions are unlikely to help matters, especially as Russia kicked out an official in charge of England fan management in their tit-for-tat expulsion of 23 British diplomats.
So far, there has been no indication of teams boycotting the tournament. The last to do so was the USSR in 1974, when at the height of the Cold War, they refused to play Chile in a qualifying play-off at the same Santiago stadium where executions had taken place a year before during a coup that brought General Pinochet to power — this meant they didn’t reach the finals in West Germany.
Should England pull out with over 30 days remaining before the tournament they will be fined Dh970,000 by Fifa, or double that if they pull out with less than 30 days to go. In both cases they would be expelled from the next World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
