Russia giving up top FIFA seat, targets new UEFA position

Russia is giving up its place on the FIFA Council and proposing its football federation president as a candidate to join the UEFA executive committee, the European football body said Thursday.

The FIFA seat is being vacated by Alexey Sorokin, who joined the council four years ago while he was CEO of the Russian organizing committee for the 2018 World Cup.

Sorokin took over the FIFA seat left open when a vetting panel blocked then-Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko from retaining his seat because of a conflict of interest.

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Sorokin and another of the eight European delegates on FIFA's 37-member council, Fernando Gomes of Portugal, are not standing for re-election by UEFA member federations on April 20.

The new candidates are Peter Peters, the vice president of the German soccer federation, and Romanian federation president Razvan Burleanu. They are unopposed to get four-year mandates for the seats, which come with a $250,000 annual stipend from FIFA.

Russian football federation president Alexander Dyukov is among nine candidates for eight seats on the UEFA executive committee.

Dyukov is a long-time executive of Russian oil company Gazprom, which is a top-tier sponsor of the Champions League.