As a photograph it barely merits a second glance, not even to football fans. After all, this is the country’s national team – pictured here in Rio – that crashed ignominiously out of the 2014 World Cup in , failing to get out of the group stage.
Yet just 12 months before the 2018 World Cup kicks off in Moscow, this group of players has come back to haunt Russian football in the most dramatic way.
According to Daily Mail, the entire team in the picture – indeed the entire Russian squad for Rio 2014 – is under investigation by FIFA, the sport’s governing body. And today it is asking if all 23 players were part of Russia’s vast state-sponsored doping programme.
The paper has established that the Rio 23 and a further 11 current professional footballers are on a list of more than 1,000 ‘people of interest’, drawn up by doping investigators charged with getting to the bottom of global sport’s biggest scandal of the past decade.
It is the first time that the cloud of suspicion covering the rest of Russian sport has expanded its dark shadow over football, too, and the revelation poses further questions about Russia’s suitability to stage the tournament.
Further, it is also understood that this is the first time that an entire football team has been investigated – let alone a national team.
FIFA officials possess a dossier of detailed evidence and intelligence about the players. What action they are taking, if any, is so far unclear, although a spokesman confirmed that they are ‘still investigating the allegations.’
What is known is that four players in the picture are playing for Russia in this year’s Confederations Cup, regarded as a trial run for next year’s World Cup finals, while a fifth 2014 squad member, former Chelsea defender Yuri Zhirkov, is also at the tournament.
-Dailymail