Nilsson is First Vice-President of Uefa and at the same time Swedish Sport's highest representative as Chairman of the Swedish Sports Confederation.
On Thursday, information from the UEFA Executive Committee meeting last Tuesday was leaked. There, 17 people voted to let Russian youth teams through and three against, according to Sky Sports.
Nilsson himself believes that the vote was for an investigation to look at how such an opening could take place.
– I have tried to explain this, but there is still a lot of pressure on the issue. There are misunderstandings or that you have not really grasped what the thoughts are, he told TT yesterday.
Fotbollskanalen's Olof Lundh believes that Nilsson's two roles clash on this issue.
"On one chair he runs a Swedish line and on the other he has a Russian-friendly line. It is incomprehensible. Karl-Erik must choose or Swedish sport must act.
"He has to choose"
Karin Mattsson, chairman of the Swedish Ski Association, agrees with Lundh.
"He has to choose. They are not possible to combine," she told Dagens Nyheter.
Swedish sport has presented a united front against Russian teams in the international community. On Friday, 50 specialist sports federations will have a digital meeting with Nilsson.
"Karl-Erik Nilsson is a polished politician and made sure to postpone the meeting to have time to call around to all the actors to hang on to this post," Lundh explains.
Could it be that he misunderstood the vote in Uefa?
"No, in that case he should lose his job for that reason. This is not so complicated. You have the chairman of Swedish Sport (RF) who says that we have a line, that we are not playing against Russia because of the war of aggression. Then you have him in another role where he votes for it," Lundh says.
Karl-Erik Nilsson was asked yesterday by TT if his position in the RF is threatened.
– No, I have not received any such signals, but it is clear that some people are worried about what is happening and I understand that. We have to find a way out of this.