Russian national women’s football team to play two friendlies against Azerbaijan

MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. The Russian national women’s football team will play two friendly matches against Azerbaijan in the next two weeks, the press office of the Russian Football Union (RFU) announced in a statement on Wednesday.
Both matches will be played in Russia’s southern Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The first will take place on November 28 and the second on December 2, the statement reads.
The Russian and Azerbaijani women played each other twice last year during qualifying for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup with Russia winning both matches by shutout (2-0; 4-0).
According to the current FIFA Women’s World Rankings, Azerbaijan is ranked 75th, while Russia is 25th.
This year the Russian women have played nine international matches – against Botswana (4-0), Ecuador (4-0; 3-2), Kenya (4-0), Haiti (2-1), Uruguay (1-1; 1-2) and North Korea (0-0; 0-3).
The International Association Football Federation (FIFA) announced on February 28, 2022 that the Russian national team and all professional clubs representing the country were barred from taking part in FIFA tournaments.
In turn, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a similar decision in regard to the Russian national football team’s participation in UEFA tournaments.
Both FIFA and UEFA cited Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as grounds for their respective bans on Russian teams’ participation in competitions.