Euro 2016, Russia, the World Cup, football politics and conflicting interests

As Uefa rules on Russia’s role in the Marseille violence, it should be remembered Ángel María Villar Llona, interim head of Uefa, is also the Fifa head of Russia 2018

Ángel María Villar Llona’s roles at Uefa and Fifa mean there is a clear conflict of interest when it comes to punishing Russia for their fans’ violence at Euro 2016. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images 

As football tournaments go, Euro 2016 was always likely to surf new extremes. The largest Euros. The richest Euros. Plus, it turns out, other things too. Just five days in, laced with anxiety on other fronts, and elevated to a new pitch by the fallout from the violence in Marseille, France 2016 already feels like the most politically charged, macro-cosmically fraught European sporting event since the end of the cold war.

It is against this backdrop that Uefa’s disciplinary committee has ruled on Russia’s charge for its supporters’ role in the brutality at Stade Vélodrome. On the face of it, a suspended ejection from Euro 2016 looks a bold, swingeing punishment. Or at least, as tough a punishment as Uefa could afford to take without stepping across the line into actually doing something concrete.

 

The verdict of the Control Ethics and Disciplinary Body takes a little unravelling. Most obviously, Uefa should be applauded for raising the prospect of ejection for any nation whose fans endanger lives and generally trash the spectacle. Against this, there is the balance of not punishing a nation and a set of players for acts committed by a criminal minority. Even when, as here, that nation seems scarcely disturbed, sections of its media and politicians even rather proud.

Look a little closer at the realpolitik, however, and this starts to look instead like an expertly moderated pseudo-punishment. The qualifications are clear. Disorder has to take place in the stadium. And let’s face it, with England safely despatched, Russian hooligans are pretty unlikely to rush the Slovakia end on Wednesday night.

 

Plus the threat of sanction ends once Russia exit the tournament, which is possibly as early as next week. Add in the fact a previous suspended six-point deduction expired only at the end of qualification and Russian football is dodging the real body-blows here with all the skill of a roided-up ultra at a pre‑brawl forest training camp.

Immediate ejection, a stadium ban, a points penalty, a larger fine, a longer suspended sentence: no guilty nation – be they England, Russia, Iceland, Albania – could have complained if any of these had been the punishment. At the end of which Russia have in effect been fined €150,000 (£120,000) for the most feral violence at a modern-day, post-gentrification European Championship.

 

So, Uefa is to be applauded. This is a sensible punishment. The Euros survive intact. Political meltdown has been avoided, a tangle of interests preserved. And if it all seems a little soft, the message here that everyone gets one shot at riots, racism and flares, then this is hardly surprising. Remember, if you can through the haze of alliances, who we’re dealing with here. Not just in Russia but in Paris and Geneva too.

 

At which point, enter Ángel María Villar Llona, big football politics and a note of genuinely blaring conflicted interest.

Villar Llona is currently interim head of Uefa. He is officially in charge of this tournament. He will present the trophy to the winners on 10 July. His eye is on everything that passes here. Villar Llona also has another important job. In his spare time he’s the Fifa bureau chairman of Russia 2018.

 

Just digest that for a moment. The head of Uefa, a body tasked with resolving Russia’s and England’s disciplinary problems while at the mercy of a vast breaking wave of interests, is also Fifa head of Russia’s World Cup.

In this he works directly with Victor Mutko, longstanding Russian sporting-political powerbroker and Villar Llona’s close friend and associate. Mutko was in Marseille on Saturday night and could be seen waving to the Russian fans at pitch side shortly before they rioted. Igor Lebedev, a Russian FA executive committee member, has since said “if Mutko had been with the fans in the stands and was not an official, he would have also have got into the fight with the England fans”. Mutko has denied that this is the case. He is also, in all seriousness, Russia’s minster for sport.

 

Villar Llona is more familiar as the longstanding head of the Spanish FA. During his tenure Spain and Russia have formed an allegiance on governance issues. Plus, apparently, a kind of loyalty. Last year Villar Llona was fined SFr 25,000 (£18,000) by Fifa’s ethics committee for refusing to cooperate sufficiently with the Michael Garcia investigation into alleged corruption surrounding Russia’s World Cup bid.

Garcia did try to interview Villar Llona. As the Norwegian journalist Pal Odegard revealed in an excellent profile last year, one of Villar Llona’s few audible utterances during their time together was “gilipollas”, which means “motherfucker”. Just to reiterate, and for the avoidance of any doubt, this is the current head of Uefa.

 

Since 1998 Villar Llona has also been climbing the ladder in Zurich, rising to become head of Fifa’s renowned – no giggling at the back – legal department. The Spanish league president Javier Tebas, a long-time adversary, has called Villar Llona “either very smart or very stupid” for not suspecting there was something very wrong going on during the golden years when gifts and trinkets piled up and air was thick with the tang of palm-grease. Another of Villar Llona’s close friends was the now deceased Julio Grondona, the disgraced former chairman of Fifa’s finance committee. Safely dead, the Argentinian has since been blame-loaded as the corruption king at the centre of the recent bribery scandal.

It must be stressed Villar Llona is not on the disciplinary committee. He is simply the acting Uefa president. He will become involved out of necessity if that suspended sentence is activated by further flares or fighting inside a stadium. For now, and for so many reasons not actually to do with football, Uefa will be hoping against hope this doesn’t happen.

Two things are clear. First, just how far Greg Dyke and the fusty old home guard of England’s own FA are from the real power centres here. And second, what a peculiar high wire act Uefa has in train simply to keep the wheels turning. The prospect of Villar Llona attempting to expel a nation with whose imminent World Cup he is so intimately bound up, who are his allies and fellow travellers, would be a court drama of epic scale.

On that note, there is, of course, still a chance Russia may yet meet Ukraine in the knockout stage, a first staging of the Crimea clásico. It might just take more than warm balls and a friendly handshake to get out of that one.

CREDIT TO:https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/14/euro-2016-russia-world-cup-2018-football-politics-angel-maria-villar-llona