Russian will become one of global football governing body FIFA’s official languages after a vote in favor of the proposal at the organization’s congress in Qatar on Thursday.
The FIFA Council submitted the proposal to amend Article 9 of the FIFA Statutes, with 210 members present for the vote in Doha. Of these, 208 were eligible to vote and 191 decided to do so.
In order to be accepted, the proposal – put forward at a February 24 FIFA Council meeting and which included adding Arabic and Portuguese as well as Russian to the list of official languages – needed a majority of 156 votes but passed by some way with 187 ‘yes’ votes to four ‘no’ votes in total.
Prior to Thursday’s vote, FIFA’s official languages were English, Spanish, French and German. News of the proposal had previously been shared by German reporter Markus Harm on social media and was confirmed by the FIFA press service, according to TASS.