Belarus Premier League attracts global attention as it plays on

Carlos Resino Sports Editor, The Pawprint

Football is suspended in Spain, Portugal, the UK, France, Italy and most European countries because of the coronavirus pandemic – but the game still rolls in Belarus. 

The Belarusian league barely gets any attention from foreign fans. On Saturday, there were six top-flight games in the eastern European country including the derby between FC Minsk and Dinamo Minsk watched by a capacity 3,000 crowd in Belarus’ capital.

“It so happened that this derby was practically the only official football match on earth,” Dinamo Minsk coach stated after the game. There have been fewer than 300 cases and no deaths from coronavirus in the former Soviet republic, which has a population of 9.5 million.