The last league standing, with a little vodka
The coronavirus pandemic has decimated the sporting calendar around the world but one European country’s main league is insisting on cracking on as normal.
The Belarusian Premier League is the only professional football competition still happening, despite there being more than 150 cases of Covid-19 in the eastern European country, according to the Belarusian Health Ministry.
Belarusian teams do not feature regularly in European football’s glamour competition, the Champions League, but their domestic league could be exposed to more coverage than ever with fans desperate for their weekly hit of sport.
The league has said it has no intention of postponing matches or cancelling the season, a stance in keeping with the advice Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko recently gave to his people. Lukashenko, who has been in office since 1994, told Belarusians they should drink 50ml of vodka a day and regularly head to the sauna if they want to ward off the virus.
Belarus has a population of more than 9.5 million but the 65-year-old’s advice differs greatly from guidelines recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Lukashenko played in an amateur ice hockey match last weekend and was asked whether he feared Covid-19. He said sport ‘‘is the best anti-virus remedy’’.
‘‘It’s better to die standing on your feet than to live on your knees,’’ he told a Belarusian television station.
Lukashenko was also asked whether anything would stop him playing ice hockey.
‘‘It is possible, but why? I don’t understand. There are no viruses here,’’ he continued. ‘‘Did you see any of them flying around? I don’t see them too. This is a fridge.’’
Meanwhile, the country’s main sport, football, resumed last weekend with six matches in the top division, including a derby in the capital Minsk. A capacity crowd of 3000 was in attendance, according to the BBC.
The only precautionary measure was to take the temperatures of fans – some were wearing face masks – entering the stadiums, according to the UK’s Sky News, before they were huddled together in the stands.
There are eight matches scheduled to take place in the Belarusian Premier League this weekend but the competition’s resumption is under scrutiny.
The general secretary of Fifpro, the world players’ union, told the BBC it is ‘‘frankly not comprehendible’’ for professional football in Belarus to continue in a pandemic. ‘‘We’re appealing for it to be taken with the same cautionary measures that have been taken in the rest of football,’’ Jonas Baer-Hoffmann said.