FOOTBALL: Shakhtar Donetsk coach urges Iran to be kicked out of World Cup, replaced by Ukraine

“Iran should be kicked out of the World Cup and Ukraine should come instead,” said Shakhtar Donet­sk gen­er­al man­ag­er Sergey Palkin.

The Mid­dle East­ern nations will face Wales and the Unit­ed States, start­ing with Group B rivals Eng­land on 21 November.

But Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky has accused the com­pa­ny of sup­ply­ing drones to Rus­sia, and Palkin is demand­ing that it with­draw from the competition.

Shakhtar Foot­ball Club calls on FIFA and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty at large to imme­di­ate­ly ban the Iran­ian nation­al team from play­ing in the World Cup on the grounds of its direct involve­ment in ter­ror­ist attacks against Ukraini­ans,” Palkin said. A state­ment from said:

“This is a legit­i­mate deci­sion that should bring the whole world’s atten­tion to a regime that kills its good peo­ple and helps mur­der Ukrainians.”

The ‘vacant spot’ should be filled by Ukraine, who has proven wor­thy of a World Cup appearance.

“In the qual­i­fy­ing rounds, they were even­ly matched with oth­er nation­al teams and played their best.

“This deci­sion is his­tor­i­cal­ly and sport­ing­ly justified.

Enough of repeat­ing the fail­ures of the 2018 Rus­sia World Cup behind an emp­ty the­sis of “the apo­lit­i­cal nature of sport”.

“It’s pol­i­tics that dri­ves ter­ror­ist par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Cup. It’s time to put an end to that politics.”

Ukraine lost to Wales in a World Cup qual­i­fi­er ear­li­er this year.

Zelen­sky, 44, has revealed that the sev­en Russ­ian drones shot down in Ukraine were sup­plied by Iran.

In response, he dis­missed the Iran­ian ambas­sador to Ukraine.

Iran has also been accused of send­ing per­son­nel to Crimea to sup­port the dead­ly bomb­ing of Ukrain­ian cities by kamikaze planes.

Activists have also stepped up calls for Iran to be deport­ed after a crack­down by Iran’s reli­gious and moral police killed more than 200 demonstrators.

In Iran, a stu­dent detained for not wear­ing a scarf cor­rect­ly has been killed in a riot.