The Lithuanian national team will avoid a confrontation with Belarus.

2023-12-02 17:16 © lff.lt

On Saturday in the German city of Hamburg, a meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee took place, which was relevant to the Lithuanian football community.

An important decision was approved in Germany - regarding the Lithuanian men's national team's matches in the fight for survival in the UEFA Nations League C division in March.

According to the initial tournament regulations, Lithuanians were supposed to play against Belarus twice in March to fight for survival in the C division.

The Lithuanian Football Federation (LFF) has repeatedly emphasized that they do not want to compete against the footballers from this country and UEFA has been constantly seeking solutions to resolve the situation.

The LFF reminds that even before the start of the war initiated by Russia in Ukraine, Russian footballers were allocated to one of the groups in the B division of the 2022 UEFA Nations League. After the war, the Russian Football Union was suspended and lost the opportunity to compete in international competitions, so they automatically got the fourth place in the group and were relegated to the C division.

Nevertheless, the main Russian football organization remains suspended and there are no announcements yet about its return to international competitions, which means that one spot becomes available in the C division.

According to the agreement of the four teams that were supposed to fight for survival in the C division, in this case, the two best fourth places in their groups from last year (Cyprus and Belarus) automatically secure their place in the C division, and Lithuania and Gibraltar national teams will compete for the remaining spot. They will face each other in home and away matches in March for the remaining spot in the C division, and the losers of the series will be relegated to the D division.

In this case, only six teams will remain to compete.