MOSCOW, May 3. /TASS/. A friendly football match between the national teams of Tajikistan and Russia is possible either in late 2025 or early 2026, but everything will depend on the country’s possible progress regarding the qualifying matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the press office of the Football Federation of Tajikistan (FFT) told TASS on Friday.
Secretary General of the Russian Football Union (RFU) Maxim Mitrofanov, told TASS on Thursday that the FFT administration earlier offered the Russian Football Union to play a friendly football match on the territory of Russia.
The Russian national football team played an away friendly match against Tajikistan on November 17, 2022, ending in a scoreless draw. Mitrofanov said the RFU is now considering Tajikistan's proposal to hold a possible rematch, keeping its options open to other possibilities.
"We have matches scheduled as part of the second round of the qualifiers for the [2026] World Cup against Jordan and Pakistan on June 6 and 11 respectively," the statement from the FFT reads.
"We are third in the group as of today where the top two teams would advance to the 2027 Asian Cup and continue playing for a trip to the [FIFA] World Cup," the statement continued. "If our national team is through to the next round, then we are set to play matches within the World Cup qualifiers."
"It means that the [friendly] match against Russia can be played either in late 2025 or in early 2026," the FFT said. "There were no talks as of yet about holding a friendly match with the Russian national team and it is still too early to speak about it."
Russia’s football ban
The International Association Football Federation (FIFA) announced on February 28, 2022 that the Russian national team and all professional clubs representing the country were barred from taking part in FIFA tournaments.
In turn, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a similar decision in regard to the Russian national football team’s participation in UEFA tournaments.
Both FIFA and UEFA cited Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as grounds for their respective bans on Russian teams’ participation in competitions.
Since sanctions were introduced, the Russian national football squad has played a host of friendlies against other countries, namely against Kyrgyzstan (2-1), Tajikistan (0-0), Uzbekistan (0-0), Iran (1-1), Iraq (2-0), Cameroon (1-0), Kenya (2-2), Cuba (8-0) and Serbia (4-0).