ZURICH: World and European federations FIFA and UEFA have joined forces to pressure the Greek government into reversing into scrapping of the Greek cup writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

The government called a halt to this season’s competition earlier this month after a quarterfinal between league leaders Olympiakos and second division AEK had to be abandoned because of crowd violence sparked by after a last-minute Olympiakos goal.

The action came only two weeks after the Greek authorities suspended top league games for a week following crowd violence. On the resumption league games took place behind closed doors.

The ultimate penalty for political interference in football is for a country to be suspended from international competition – as is currently the case with Indonesia and Kuwait.

A FIFA statement after today’s meeting of the executive committee said it had decided “to send a letter to the Greek authorities signed jointly by FIFA and UEFA requesting that they reverse the decision to cancel the Greek Cup within two weeks since this decision appeared to be disproportionate.”

The statement added: “In case of non-compliance, the relevant FIFA bodies would consider sanctions.”

Other decisions

In other decisions, the FIFA exco decided:

1, the new FIFA Council, which replaces the exco, will meet for the first time ahead of FIFA Congress in May in Mexico City;

2, a new staff recruitment policy will focus on diversity and gender equality;

3, member associations and confederations should propose new additional Council members by September 30;

4, formally to support the request for restitution lodged with the US courts;

5, to approved the Financial and Governance Report 2015;

6, to experiment with a fourth substitute in extra time, as permitted by IFAB, at the Olympics, the Under-20 Women’s World Cup and Club World Cup;

7, give Puerto Rica and Zambia deadlines of June 30 and September 30 respectivcely to adopt new statutes.

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