The Russian football federation is considering leaving UEFA to join the Asian confederation after its clubs and national team were banned following the because of country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Both UEFA and FIFA banned Russian clubs and teams from their competitions in February.

Due to this, Clubs from the Russian Premier League are not allowed to play in the Champions League, Europa League or Europa Conference League.

The men’s national side was removed from qualifying for this year’s World Cup, with Poland handed a walkover to Tonight’s play-off final, while the women’s national team can be thrown out of the European Championship this summer.

Few reports in Russia suggest that the country’s football federation may consider making the switch from UEFA to the AFC.

If this happened, Russia would switch to the Asian qualification tournament for the World Cup and compete in the Asian Cup as opposed to the European Championship.

Club sides would be able to participate and compete in the Asian Champions League rather than the UEFA Champions League and the AFC Cup rather than the Europa League.

The switch would have to be ratified by other Asian federations including Japan and may not be an easy task to complete.

This has happened before in football, with Kazakhstan which was originally a member of AFC before joining UEFA in 2002 and Australia left the Oceania federation to play in Asia in 2005.

Some articles at Championat.com have already started discussing pros and cons of switching from UEFA to AFC.