MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. Russia’s previously announced friendly football matches against Thailand and Vietnam align with the Russian Football Union’s (RFU) envisaged strategy to play against major countries, RFU Secretary General Maxim Mitrofanov told TASS on Wednesday.
The RFU has said that it wants the Russian national football squad to play ten friendlies a year against countries ranked in the top 80 of the FIFA Rankings. On September 5, Russia is set to play a friendly against Vietnam, which is currently 115th in FIFA Rankings and two days later, against Thailand (101st in FIFA Rankings).
"Matches against the national teams of Thailand and Vietnam do not contradict the RFU’s concept," Mitrofanov said. "The RFU first of all states that the institution that is the national team should stay in place and that the national team must play matches."
"We certainly want to play as many matches as possible in Russia, but at the same time we have to take into account the objective present-day picture in the world," he continued.
"If we take a look at this fall’s schedule, we see that teams from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America are all scheduled to play official matches," Mitrofanov noted. "Only 28 national teams from Asia, which have already been eliminated from their respective qualifying tournaments, have a hypothetical chance of playing against the Russian national team. However, the majority of them have already inked deals to play against each other."
"The national teams of Thailand and Vietnam have also agreed to play against each other and this is why they are unable to come play on Russian soil. In this regard, we [RFU] struck a deal to hold a mini-tournament," the Russian football official said.
"Out of 28 [Asian] national teams, which theoretically could have played against Russia, Thailand and Vietnam are ranked by FIFA today as 2nd and 4th respectively," Mitrofanov added.
The RFU’s press office announced earlier in the month that the Russian national football team was set to play friendly matches in early September against Vietnam (September 5) and Thailand (September 7).
Both matches will be hosted by the over 40,200-seat capacity My Dinh National Stadium in Hanoi and will kick off at 4:00 p.m. Moscow time (1:00 p.m. GMT).
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), Serbia (4-0) and Belarus 4-0.