Amid international sanctions against Belarus, the country’s under 21 national football team will play two European Championship qualifiers as home matches in Georgia.
According to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) official website, the Belarusian U21 team will play in September at the Tengiz Burjanadze Stadium in the city of Gori. On 4 September, they will face Belgium, and four days later, Austria.
Due to UEFA sanctions, Belarusian teams are prohibited from holding home matches in their own country. The sanctions have been in effect since 2022 as a result of Minsk’s support for Moscow in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, Belarusian teams are not prohibited from holding such games on the territory of other countries, but are not allowed to have fans in attendance.
Before Georgia, the U21 team played their home matches in Armenia. The Belarusian senior national football team will play their World Cup qualifier against Scotland on Hungarian soil.
OC Media contacted the Georgian Football Federation to inquire how a Georgian stadium was chosen as the location for the Belarusian home matches and whether ties between Minsk and Moscow, as well as international sanctions against Belarus, created any complications in the decision-making process.
The federation told OC Media they would look into the matter and respond at a later time.
Unlike the Belarusian footballers, who still have more than a month left before their matches in Gori, Russian fencers have already arrived in Georgia to take part in the Fencing World Championship currently being held in Tbilisi. Some of the fencers appear to be ranking members of the Russian military with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In reaction to the participation of the Russian athletes, a protest was held in front of the Tbilisi Sports Palace on Sunday. The goal, according to the protest’s Facebook event page, was to make clear that ‘Russian soldiers will never be happy in Antsukhelidze’s homeland’, referring to Giorgi Antsukhelidze, a Georgian soldier who was tortured and killed during the 2008 August War.
Xandie (Alexandra) Kuenning
