Russia Women To Be Replaced By Portugal At UEFA Women’s Euro 2022

Over two months after excluding Russia from its soccer competitions, the European governing body finally excluded their women’s national team from the UEFA Women’s Euro in England this July, replacing them in the finals with the team they defeated in the qualification play-offs, Portugal.

On February 28, the world and European governing bodies issued a joint-statement which said that “all Russian teams, whether national representative teams or club teams, shall be suspended from participation in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice.” However, they did not go so far as to replace the women’s national team in July’s tournament in the hope that the war in Ukraine may have come to a conclusion in the meantime.

Two months on, with the war showing no sign of ending, UEFA’s hand has been forced. Yesterday, they confirmed Russia’s exclusion from the women’s European Championship, as well as the ongoing FIFA Women’s World Cup qualification campaign and next season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League.

They stated that “further to its 28 February 2022 decision to suspend all Russian representative teams and clubs from participating in UEFA competition matches until further notice, the UEFA Executive Committee today took a series of decisions relating to the implications of that decision for its upcoming competitions, in order to ensure their smooth staging in a safe and secure environment for all those concerned.”

If Russia’s exclusion from the UEFA Women’s Euro seemed increasingly inevitable for each day the war in Ukraine continued, their replacement with Portugal was not certain. Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in March, UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin gave hope to the Czech Republic and Ukraine, the other teams eliminated in the qualification play-offs, by saying “the other one (replacement team) is the thing we are discussing. We will probably have a draw between the teams who nearly qualified. But that has not been decided.”

In the end, Portugal, who lost 1-0 on aggregate to Russia over two legs in a play-off in April 2021 were promoted to replace the team that eliminated them from the tournament. Thus, UEFA followed the precedent it set 30 years ago in the only other instance of a country being excluded from its European Championship tournament.

Then, Yugoslavia were excluded as a result of the ongoing civil war and break-up the country. As a result the team they qualified ahead of, Denmark, replaced them in the men’s European Championship in 1992. Despite having only ten days in which to prepare for the finals, Denmark implausibly went on to win the tournament.

The Portugal women’s national team will therefore go into Group C of the UEFA Women’s Euro in July alongside reigning champions, the Netherlands, Sweden and their first opponents, Switzerland. Unlike, their group opponents, the Portuguese team, who last played in April have no preparatory matches scheduled between now and July.

Their head coach, Francisco Neto said, “I begin by saying that we would exchange our presence at this European Championship for a world without war and without the shocking events that we have been following on television: bombings, deaths, children, women, entire families in suffering and on the run.”

“When we received the invitation from UEFA to fill the vacancy in Russia, and participate in an event of this magnitude, we accepted with great honor and we will prepare ourselves in the best way to compete in the competition, in what will be our second European finals.”

The Swedish women’s national team coach, Peter Gerhardsson also backed the UEFA announcement. “This is a decision I fully support, given what has happened for a long time and is still going on in Ukraine. And just like then, my thoughts are still with the people there, with the hope that the war will end as soon as possible.”

He also welcomed the clarity it offered his own team in finally discovering their third group-stage opponents in the tournament. “It is of course good that we have now received a decision to relate to the current European Championships this summer, and we now have the opportunity to continue working with the preparations and analysis of this summer’s opponents.”

Russia’s exclusion from the FIFA Women’s World Cup qualification campaign run by UEFA means their previous results have been expunged from Group E in which they had sat in second place behind Denmark. As a consequence of this, Denmark, who had defeated Russia 3-1 at home but still had to travel to play them away, today were guaranteed automatic qualification to the World Cup next year in Australia and New Zealand. It will the first time Denmark have played in the finals since 2007.