Lithuania Women have been handed two 3-0 defeats and fined €5,000 ($5.4k) for refusing to play Belarus in their European Championship qualifiers.
UEFA imposed the punishment after Lithuania were deemed to have “forfeited” the games, with the nation “responsible for the match not taking place”, European football’s governing body said.
Lithuania were scheduled to host Belarus in League C, Group C1 of the qualification campaign for next summer’s finals on May 31, before the return match in Belarus on June 4.
The decision essentially ends Lithuania’s qualification hopes, as they are second in the group of four with four points from four matches, while Belarus now top the group with 12 points from their opening four games.
Speaking to Lithuanian website 15min.lt after the qualification draw in March, Lithuanian FA president Edgaras Stankevicius insisted that the national team would not play their games against Belarus, instead taking a “principled” stance. Belarus diplomatically supports Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite widespread international condemnation.
“They can impose walkovers, penalties, but we will not play,” Stankevicius said. “While in Switzerland, I had a brief conversation with UEFA. Our position is principled. From what I was able to find out, the official regulations do not specify what to do with a team that refuses to play matches.”
Lithuania Women have never qualified for a major tournament (Marcio Machado/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Russia was banned from competing in UEFA and FIFA competitions after invading Ukraine. Belarus was not banned by either body.
In September 2023, UEFA announced plans to reinstate Russia’s under-17 sides to European competitions. The following month, FIFA said it would allow Russian sides to participate in the men’s and women’s under-17 World Cup tournaments. FIFA said it “reiterated its condemnation of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine”. Any representative Russian side has to play under the name “Football Union of Russia” rather than “Russia”, with no flags, anthems or political emblems allowed to be displayed.
Ukraine’s football federation said following the decision that it “will not take part in any competitions with the participation of Russian teams, and appeal to other UEFA member associations to boycott possible matches with the participation of teams from the Russian Federation, subject to their admission.”
Lithuanian FA president Stankevicius also said that the nation would refuse to participate in matches against any representative Russian team.
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In October 2022, UEFA said it was “constantly monitoring the situation” in Belarus and could yet take “further decisions” against the eastern European nation, after troops from the country were deployed with Russian forces near Ukraine.
In 2023, the Lithuanian parliament passed sanctions against Russian and Belarusian citizens due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Those sanctions came into effect last month.
Lithuania shares a 680-kilometer border with Belarus, but the former has integrated with the global West in recent decades and was accepted into NATO in 2004.
In March, the Olympic committees of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia submitted a joint letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), requesting that Russian and Belarusian athletes should not be allowed to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympics due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
(Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)