Metalist Kharkiv expelled from Champions League
Print Edition
UEFA disqualified Metalist Kharkiv from the Champions League yesterday for links to match-fixing in Ukraine, and could now reinstate PAOK Thessaloniki.
World football’s most prized club competition has further legal issues with another team, Turkey’s Fenerbahce, also fighting expulsion over a years-old domestic match-fixing case as it prepares to play Arsenal in the playoffs next week.
Metalist will challenge UEFA’s verdict with an urgent appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and can ask for the sanctions to be frozen while the case is processed.
“We regret that such a sanction was applied, and we do not agree with it,” Metalist first vice president Konstantin Pivovarov said in a statement.
The Ukrainian club was scheduled to play Germany’s Schalke next Wednesday in the first leg of the playoff round, after eliminating PAOK 3-1 on aggregate in the third qualifying round last week.
UEFA President Michel Platini led an emergency meeting yesterday which decided that the Greek club will now go to Germany instead. The return match is on Aug. 27, with the winner advancing to the groups draw in Monaco two days later.
Metalist appears to have ended its debut Champions League campaign unbeaten but in disgrace.
It finished runner-up last season to title winner Shakhtar Donetsk.
UEFA charged Metalist last week after CAS upheld sports director Yevhen Krasnikov’s five-year ban, imposed by the Ukrainian Football Federation. Krasnikov allegedly helped fix a 2008 Ukrainian league match against Karpaty Lviv.
Fenerbahce officials were convicted in a Turkish criminal trial of helping fix matches during the team’s successful run to the league title in 2011.
UEFA banned Fenerbahce in June from two seasons of European club competitions, but the sanction was frozen pending an appeal at CAS. Fenerbahce eliminated Salzburg in the third qualifying round to earn a playoff against Arsenal. The first leg is in Istanbul next Wednesday.
CAS is preparing to set a hearing date for Fenerbahce’s appeal and aims to give a verdict before the draw in Monaco.
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