Suduva sweat on visas for manager and three players ahead of trip to Glasgow

Suduva’s manager and three key players may not be able to travel to Scotland to face Celtic in the Europa League because of visa problems.

Celtic face the Lithuanian minnows on Thursday in a play-off tie for a place in the Europa League group stages.

However, the Marijampole outfit are facing a race against time for Kazakh manager Vladimir Cheburin, Serbian stopper Aleksandar Zivanovic, Montenegrin midfielder Jovan Cadenovic and Belarusian defender Vital Hayduchyk to cut through red tape and get a visa for this week’s game in Glasgow.

Rangers’ Europa League opponents FC Ufa made headlines last week when they faced a last-minute scramble to get visas for their UK visit and had to spend a day at the British Embassy in Moscow, eventually receiving their documentation just hours before their flight.

Suduva say they have hit a brick wall of bureaucracy in their bid to get their key personnel to Glasgow.

Director Karolis Skinkys said: “Visas are necessary for our non-european members of the travelling party. The problem is the company who process UK visas in Vilnius only works for two days a month. We submitted our application on 20 August and they have replied they cannot upload the documents until 28 August, from which it takes five working days to process, which is obviously no good.

“The Lithuanian Embassy in the UK have told us this is not their business and won’t get involved. The only alternative would be to go to Paris and try and get a fast-track visa, which we are not keen to do and doesn’t guarantee we will get them in time.

“We have consulted with Celtic and also AEK Athens, who were in a similar position to us with a few of their noneuropean players. The Greek Embassy in the UK ended up fixing it for them, but we’ve been told it is not an option.”