“Those who return home after the World Cup will tell their friends about a completely different Russia than the one they know from the press. This, of course, will influence business, all foreigners who think or are willing to invest here”, expressed with euphoria the president of the Association of European Companies (AEB), Johan Vanderplaetse, prior to the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018.
With this event, Russia consummated years of attempts to polish its international image through sport, since before it also hosted world competitions in table tennis (2010), fencing, judo (2014), taekwondo (2015) and, of course, the Winter Olympics in Sochi (2014). Both the World Cup FIFA such as the Sochi Games were rated as the most expensive in their respective industries with investments of $14.2 billion and $50 billion.
Russia found in sport on a global scale a way to boost its public relations not only with the West, but also with the Middle East and the rest of Europe and Asia. Before hosting major events as an independent nation, it famously hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics as the Soviet Union (USSR), though they were tainted by a US-led boycott. Russia had struggled to open doors with other tournaments.
“In the Western media, Russia has always had an image of an arbitrary country, where freedoms are not respected and Vladimir Putin, its president, has had that image more in particular, so this type of sporting event allowed Russia and Putin try to change that image that the world has of them. There was not necessarily much interest in sports as such, the important thing was what image we want to give to the world and Russia wanted to give an image of openness, of a first world country where things of great magnitude can be organized, where people can go and the athletes can feel safe”, expresses Carlos Teissier ZavalaPhD in International Business from Kennedy University, Switzerland.
For the specialist Russia he did manage, “to a certain extent”, to change his perception in part thanks to his prominence in sports: “The name of Russia in the Middle East and Asia had been made up quite a bit, they are regions where Russia was already seen very differently. In the West the impact was not so much, although a more prosperous Russia was beginning to be seen, one of more openness, which gave confidence to foreign investment, there even began to be a lot of migration of students to Russian universities and all this in part of the sporting events that were a very important part of that strategy.”
From 2003 to date, several elite world soccer leagues began to open up to Russian heritage, as happened with Roman Abramovic and Chelsea (England), Alisher Usmanov at Arsenal (England), Maxim Demin at Bournemouth (England), Dmitry Rybolovlev at AS Monaco (France) and Circle Bruges (Belgium), as well as Valeriy Oyf at Vittesse Arnhem (Netherlands).
However, the invasion of Russia to Ukraine In recent days the landscape has changed. Far from those images in which Vladimir Putin greeted and smiled with Gianni Infantino, president of the FIFANow the big international sports organizations are expelling the Russian representations and forcing their athletes to compete without a flag or anthem.
“The sanctions that have been given in recent days have been financial, economic, commercial and the sport is a second stage that is not necessarily directed at the president, but at Russian society, which is the one that is going to be angry because he is not going to see his team play the World Cup or his teams in various sports. These types of policies issued to the social and sports sphere are a strategy to weaken and to anger, above all, society against the president of Russia”, explains Fausto Pretelin, specialist in international studies and editor of Geopolitics in The Economist.
Pretelin describes that the image of Russia had already suffered severe setbacks between 2008 and 2014 due to the war conflicts against Georgia and Ukraine for the possession of South Ossetia and Crimea, respectively. However, the current situation will have even more consequences.
“Sport is a soft power tool of the States to meet objectives. Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, it has changed the face of the Russian president before the world. In the first decade of this century it had a better image than it has since 2014, even before when the division of Georgia also occurred, that is where internationally the face begins to change in political and image terms. No matter how many World Cups or sports he organizes, he is not going to clean up that image and the Ukraine thing (in 2022) is going to bury him in matters of public image abroad.”
Dr. Teissier Zavala visited the Soviet Union and later Russia as an independent nation and says that before, with the USSR, the sensations were of discomfort at seeing how the rules in that territory were exaggerated. Years later, his visits to Moscow and Saint Petersburg were more relaxed and gave him an atmosphere similar to other European capitals, such as Madrid, Paris or London, but he admits that after the 2022 conflict that perception no longer exists.
“Russia’s image has definitely collapsed completely, it is a very good example of something that takes many years to build but we can destroy it in a little while. Regardless of the political or geopolitical reasons, in the minds and opinions of people around the world, Russia looks very bad and I doubt that they will be able to recover the image in the short, medium and even long term, it will have to be very long term and many things have to happen. Events such as the Tour of Russia (cycling) and Formula 1 were beginning to gain strength, but not anymore. It is a pity above all for the Russian population that is not to blame. In the end, that image that they had been building for so long by receiving such events (such as the World Cup) completely fell apart and now, even, I doubt that anyone would even want to visit Russia.”
—How much will it cost Russia to clean up its image again through sporting events?
—“This is even worse than before, because before the image given by the USSR was strict, we already knew what it was and if they organized an event we knew it was within their parameters. The problem now is that Russia wanted to give a face to the world, it convinced us of one thing and then in 15 days that image was completely destroyed and we realized that it was not what they wanted to sell. That costs much more work to recover the image, ”replies the also professor at the universities of Shanghai and Madrid.
Within a week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian national teams and athletes have been sanctioned by organizations of great weight in sport such as the FIFAthe UEFAthe International Automobile Federation (FIA), the Tennis Federation (ITF), the Judo Federation (IJF) and the four highest governing bodies of international boxing (CMB, WBA, WBO and IBF), among others.
“The fact of making FIFA your enemy is one more decision that the Russian government will have to face in some way, but surely it will hurt the Russian president, because he had a good relationship with (Gianni) Infantino, he had approaches since The idea of taking the World Cup to Russia began and this is reversed as well as in other sports areas, ”concludes Fausto Pretelin.
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