'It's scary!' Dinamo Brest player Artem Milevskiy says match should be postponed amid Covid-19 risk in Belarus
Dinamo Brest player Artem Milevskiy insists Belarusian football chiefs should have postponed his team's match at FC Vitebsk this Saturday due to the high COVID-19 infection rate in the area, and described the situation as "scary".
The fifth round of Belarus Premier League (Vysheyshaya Liga) games is set to be staged this weekend, with Dinamo taking on Vitebsk on Saturday. The league remains the only top football division in Europe that has not postponed their calendar due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Also on rt.com ‘At least they’re wearing masks!’ BONDAGE models present 'The Sluts' defender with Player of Week award (PHOTOS)Despite the lack of any measures put in place but the Belarusian FA to combat the spread of the disease in the Eastern European country, Milevskiy, one of Belarus' star players, says that due to the current high risk of infected in the Vitebsk region, the match should have been postponed.
"We have a match with Vitebsk. There's a difficult situation with coronavirus there. They (Belarusian FA) should have rearranged it, but they haven't. It's kinda scary,"the 33-year-old Belarus-born, former Ukraine international was quoted as saying.
Vitebsk lies around 260km from the capital Minsk in the far north of Belarus, near the border with Russia. The region has been the most affected by coronavirus infections and has registered several hundred of the country's 3,281 cases of the deadly disease. Belarus' coronavirus total death toll currently stands at 33.
Dinamo, along with many Belarusian clubs, have seen an influx of interest from fans in countries where football has been a victim of the global lockdown, including in Australia and the UK.
Also on rt.com 'Ingenious insanity': Fans pay to have heads stuck on eerie mannequins as football in Belarus defies coronavirus lockdown (VIDEO)To cope with falling attendances due to coronavirus, Dinamo recently introduced the ingenious idea to create a virtual attendance option for fans, which consisted of sticking their faces onto mannequins in the stands for the price of a match ticket.
Perhaps to ease Milevskiy's fears, Brest could invest in a virtual player for the match with Vitebsk.
