FIFA president Gianni Infantino has revealed he would like to see Russia return to play in the World Cup in the future.
Russia have been banned from playing international football since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, US president Donald Trump is pursuing a peace deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The proposed deal largely cuts out Ukraine, and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly kicked out of the White House on Friday following a public spat with Trump, just one week after Trump called him a ‘dictator’ in a speech that Infantino attended.
Infantino now appears to have taken Trump’s side, after claiming their relationship is ‘critical’ to the success of the World Cup, by stating he would like to see Russia’s football team return to the world stage.
‘We all hope that peace talks will be successful, because I think it is important that we support it for the world, much more than for football, that we have peace,’ Infantino said as he arrived for meetings in Northern Ireland on Friday.
‘If there is a little role that football can play, once peace is there, then of course, we’ll play our role, and we look forward that all countries in the world can play football.’
The World Cup will head to North America next year, with the US, Mexico and Canada hosting the tournament.
Infantino has spoken of his pride at taking football’s biggest tournaments to different corners of the globe, despite criticism of the last two World Cups being held in Russia and Qatar.
‘Football is the game of everyone. Everyone loves football. It’s the number one sport in the world,’ he said.
‘We have to be bringing everyone on the table. We will go to North America, now we go to South America, go to Africa, we’ll go to Europe [for the 2030 World Cup].
‘We’ll go back to Asia [for 2034]. The FIFA Congress approved that. It was done after an in-depth report on all this. We unite the world.
‘We bring the world together and we make sure that football is played everywhere, and football is loved everywhere.
‘We give opportunities to people, for people to meet each other and to come together.’