All alone, Belarus league opts to play on
LONDON: There were a handful of thermal-imaging cameras outside Dynamo Brest’s stadium last Friday, intended to pluck out and turn away anyone showing signs of fever.
Both Brest and their opponents, Smolevichi, had been given hygiene advice: wash your hands with soap and avoid hugging.
The Ministry of Health had decreed that the stadium must be disinfected twice a day.
Other than that, though, the opening game of the Belarusian Premier League season would go ahead as planned.
It would be followed by a full slate of games tomorrow and on Sunday. There would be no restrictions on fans coming to watch.
Unlike everyone else, almost everywhere else, Belarus had decided just to play on.
As far as the country’s football authorities were concerned, there was no reason not to play.
The ABFF — the governing body of the sport in Belarus — had seen the measures taken by other European leagues in light of the mounting coronavirus pandemic: first playing games behind closed doors, and then cancelling or postponing leagues and competitions entirely.
It had concluded the decisions had little or no effect on preventing fans from gathering or the virus from spreading, and that the situation in Belarus did not warrant the cancellation of the new season.
“Is there a state of emergency declared in our country?” Vladimir Bazanov, the head of the ABFF, said in an interview with the sports website Tribuna.
“There is no critical condition, so they decided that we are starting the championship in a timely manner.”
That call has left Belarus as an outlier in European football.
Every other league on the continent, and nearly all others around the world, have been placed on hiatus.
As the scale and severity of the coronavirus pandemic has become clear, in fact, most sports in most countries across the world have done the same, shuttering their doors until it is safe — for players and for fans — to reconvene.
The response in Belarus, on the other hand, has been skeptical.
While much of Europe remains in lockdown — entire cities deserted, whole populations instructed to stay at home, often under threat of arrest — Belarus has yet to implement any severe measures.
Though the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko — widely regarded as the last dictator in Europe — has advised citizens to observe social distancing protocols and not to visit anywhere that might be crowded, he has also suggested the virus is a “psychosis.”
In public, the league’s players have acquiesced to the decision.
Sergey Kislyak, a midfielder for Brest, said that “everything is quiet” among his teammates.
“My mother works at a school; classes continue, as before,” he said. “Everything is fine.”
His teammate, Artem Milevsky, admitted to Arena Radio that though it is “strange” to be the only league playing in Europe, and though he is trying to have “less contact” with other people, it was ultimately not a decision for the players to make.
“We are paid to play,” he said. “The authorities are in control. Everything is open, everything works, you can eat everywhere.”
In private, though, things may be different. A poll released by Tribuna, the sports website, found that the majority of athletes were in favour of shutting down the league. Commentator Konstantin Genich described the idea of playing on as “desperate”.
Alexander Hleb, once of Barcelona and Arsenal and likely Belarus’ greatest player, called the lack of concern among both players and authorities “unbelievable”, though in an Instagram post he later watered down his comments.