MOSCOW: Two Russian deputies have written to FIFA, asking the international football federation to expel the United States from the 2014 World Cup.

Alexander Sidyakin of United Russia and Mikhail Markelov of Fair Russia also want the US kicked out of FIFA because of its “aggression in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, as well as an attempt to invade Syria.”

Chempionat.com reported that the letter, according to Sidyakin, was a tit-for-tat response to a similar appeal from Republican senators Mark Kirk and Dan Coates for FIFA to ban Russia from the World Cup.

Sidyakin, on his Twitter account, said: “An eye for an eye, a ball for a ball. Prevent the US playing in the World Cup. Deny its membership in FIFA.”

Ukraine issue

Kirk and Coates had written to FIFA president Sepp Blatter on March 8 “in the light of Russian military occupation of part of independent Ukraine.”

The senators had quoted a FIFA Statute stating that any form of discrimination is by suspension of membership.

Wrongly, Kirk and Cote had claimed that such decisions had been taken by FIFA over the former Yugoslavia before Euro 1992 and the 1994. In fact, those decisions were taken on security grounds – and the Euro decision was down to UEFA.

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