Aliaksandr Ivulin: ‘It’s not very safe to be a footballer in Belarus now’

T here will be no supporters in the stands of Stadion Karadorde, in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, when Belarus begin their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign with a “home” match against Switzerland on Saturday. Nor, in many eyes, will there be much excuse for the fact their meeting is taking place at all. Belarus are the competition’s pariahs: virtually friendless bar this weekend’s hosts and condemned to play all of their games on foreign soil for the foreseeable future, they will play on despite the deep sense of unease around their participation.

Last March Uefa banned Belarus from playing on their own territory on account of the country’s supporting role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But they have not been barred from competing, unlike the state to which Belarus is essentially a vassal, and few think the governing body has gone far enough. The case for a ban becomes even stronger when Belarus’s dismal human rights record, which has had a direct and crippling effect on its football scene, is thrown in.

“Sport reflects the situation in any country,” says Aliaksandr Ivulin, a journalist and former player for the Minsk-based club FC Krumkachy. Ivulin knows this better than most. On 17 February he was released from jail, 13 months into a two-year sentence for his supposed role in protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. He was incarcerated in a penal colony on the most spurious of charges, never knowing exactly when he would be freed and watching in horror as another journalist, Katsyaryna Andreeva, saw her punishment extended by eight years.

Ivulin makes the state’s abuse and appropriation of football crystal clear. “It’s not very safe to be a footballer in Belarus now, especially if you have